XP Imaging Issues

[intelinside451]

At work we order about 15 Dells at a time. They all come OEM with
their own product keys, with XP already installed and activated on
them. My time consuming problem at work is taking the time to join
each one to a domain, installing all our programs, installing office,
adobe acrobat reader, customizing the settings, shortcuts to network
folders and I have to do this for 10-20 PCs at a crack. I want to set
up one perfect PC with all the registry fixes and apps installed but
my only issue is licensing. I have a license key for adobe, office,
and of course XP Pro. How can I accomplish all this especially with
Office and Adobe product keys needed for each copy. Is there anything
besides licensing I have to worry about, I was reading about something
with the MAC address? Also, Dell has been shipping these PCs with a
Vista Restore CD for when we upgrade to Vista this winter. Very
confused here

 

[Shenan Stanley]

At work we order about 15 Dells at a time. They all come OEM with
their own product keys, with XP already installed and activated on
them. My time consuming problem at work is taking the time to join
each one to a domain, installing all our programs, installing office,
adobe acrobat reader, customizing the settings, shortcuts to network
folders and I have to do this for 10-20 PCs at a crack. I want to set
up one perfect PC with all the registry fixes and apps installed but
my only issue is licensing. I have a license key for adobe, office,
and of course XP Pro. How can I accomplish all this especially with
Office and Adobe product keys needed for each copy. Is there anything
besides licensing I have to worry about, I was reading about something
with the MAC address? Also, Dell has been shipping these PCs with a
Vista Restore CD for when we upgrade to Vista this winter. Very
confused here

Sounds like you are not using ANY of the resources you could be using.

You could use imaging - that is one option.
Using Sysprep, etc could make your life easier.
(Volume licensing certainly would.)

Some unattended installation process would make your life easier as well.
RIS/BDD, CD/DVD installation (automated) and/or network installation
(automated.)

You could even use Group Policies to push software as a machine is joined to
the domain to make your life easier.

SIDs can be a concern - but not as much for machines joining a domain - as
they get a SID assigned to them in the domain. If you don't actually have a
domain and you are using workgroups - then yes - you should change the SIDs.
Most of the imaging products come with SID changing tools (as well as
renaming tools) - where you can also get 'NewSID' from SysInternals (now
part of Microsoft) to change it otherwise. (There are other tools.)

A MAC address is unique part of the network card. A hard-coded part,
actually. Although you can 'change it' for a session and such - it is built
into the network card - so I do not know how that would be a problem or what
you read where that told you that would be a problem.

How long have you been doing this?
Have you EVER done any research about it?
Is this your PRIMARY job function?

RIS
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/overview/risvsads.mspx

BDD
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/desktopdeployment/gettingstarted.mspx

CD/DVD
http://unattended.msfn.org/

Network
http://unattended.sourceforge.net/

Imaging
http://www.leinss.com/uniimg.html
and/or
http://www.gc.peachnet.edu/www/wbeck/W2KXP.htm#Master

This, however - will be your best friend:
Search using Google!
http://www.google.com/
(How-to: http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/basics.html )


I hope you are using the group policies to lock down the machines and users?
Perhaps got a WSUS server going to keep your machines up to date without
pushing anything that might wreck the systems? Managed antivirus client?
Logon scripts?

 

[Guest]

To image computers I prefer Powerquest's Drive Image, sadly no longer
available but you can find copies on Ebay. Ghost is an alternative, but IMHO
inferior.

The problem with the sysprep/WSUS/etc route is its huge complexity, plus the
fact that results are not always what you expected, necessitating exhaustive
tests. Fine for a corporate site with 1,000 'anonymous' computers to
roll-out and man-weeks of time in which to prepare. For a small site, the
time spent learning and preparing for a syprep rollout will cost more than
the job itself.

The licensing issue is a concern, and you may have to re-register the apps
in question post-rollout. Or, you may not. Hard to predict.

My preferred route these days is imaging, plus I tend towards not using
domain logon for small sites, having found that it creates more problems than
it solves.