Using Ghost with Windows OEM for maintenance.

[Laurent]

I am a volunteer for a small daycare and we just purchased 4 identical
computers for our classrooms. Windows XP Pro is OEM on each of them
(sticker on the side).

Because all the maintenance is done by me in my free-time volunteers,
management of station must be very simple.

What we want is to Ghost one of the computer on a regular basis, like every
month, and clone the resulting image to the three others. Cloning will be
done manually from a bootable CD. Each computer should have exactly the
same configuration, except for SID,IP,Machine Name and Windows key. Then, I
won't have to perform the same maintenance reconfiguration four times every
month.

As I read here and there on the web, each time I want to clone the "master"
computer to the others, I must sysprep it and enter again the Windows key
again. That's fair and doable with 4 computers.

But Syspreping a computer doesn't mean the Activation is lost ? Will I have
to reactivate all my computers all the time ?

I don't even understand clearly how activation will work if I want to
reinstall everything from scratch as I often do at home to solve the very
common problems I have with badly written kids game.

Thanks for info.

 

[Kevin Haklar]

As you have OEM software on your machines machines with different serial
numbers you will need to leave the serial field as blank when creating your
syprep.inf file. This way when you automate the install you can type the
correct serial for each machine as you dont have a site licence. When you
run sysprep.exe there is the option to not reset the grace period for
activcation. Make sure you tick this and that should avoid you having to
register each time.

Hope that helps

 

[Jetro]

Do not sysprep master image for identical computers. Actually do not sysprep
anything.
Use ChangeSID from SysInternals, Ghost Walker, Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder
etc.

 

[Laurent]

in
microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment

Do not sysprep master image for identical computers. Actually do not
sysprep anything.
Use ChangeSID from SysInternals, Ghost Walker, Magical Jelly Bean
Keyfinder etc.

Okay. Thanks,