PC/Laptop imaging

darkmanx

darkmanx

darkmanx

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Joined
28 May 2009
Posts
25
Hi guys

Looking at installing some kind of OS deployment at my current workplace as they are predominantly thin client based so have not needed to deploy windows on a large scale. More and more laptops and PC's are now starting to be used so we need to get something implemented to make the process of building laptops quicker and less tedious than building by cd.

It will be XP thats being used so I was thinking about RIS, i know its being outdated by WDS but I've heard its a pain to get XP deployed with WDS. Other people have mentioned things like norton ghost, how would you deploy xp images with ghost? I've never used anything like that before so not sure how it would work.

cheers
 
For imaging, ghost is ok (ghost solution suite). It's possible to make a single image for different types of hardware but I've never had much success. I've only ever used it with one image per machine type.

Imaging this way you can have the machine's sid changed and have it join a domain automatically after imaging.

One thing to note is that the current version doesn't support AHCI. Imaging will just silently fail on any machines with AHCI enabled.


LANDesk is another option. IIRC it can do imaging and os installs, as well as software installation. I evaluated this about a year ago and it was awesome. Has a TONNE of features although I never got approval due to cost :)


Unattended is supposed to do remote windows installs although I've never used it: http://unattended.sourceforge.net/


As for getting the software installed after imaging/os installation, I would highly recommend wpkg. I use it quite heavily to get all the basics such as adobe reader, firefox, 7zip etc (silently) installed on new machines. Once the packages and profiles are configured you only need to install the wpkg client, reboot, and everything will get installed.

It's also possible to generate a settings.xml file so installing the client is just a matter of running a batch file (effectively just running something like: "wpkg.msi --settings-file \\server\share\settings.xml").

http://wpkg.org/
 
I use Ghost Solution Suite but it's made easier with the fact we have the same model desktop throughout the business so only need one image.

I then get it to run a post image task that runs an SMS Installer pakage I created which installs all the standard extras onto the build.

I too have had issues when trying to get a 'single image' setup working with Ghost.

If you have SMS/SCCM you can do it with that as well.
 
sideh said:
For imaging, ghost is ok (ghost solution suite). It's possible to make a single image for different types of hardware but I've never had much success. I've only ever used it with one image per machine type.
Click to expand...

Sysprep is what you want for that.

Personally i use WDS for our windows 7 systems with a winPE boot via WDS into a Ghostcast window for XP machines, i much prefer WDS, never bothered getting XP images working on it though as we're phasing them out this summer completely.
 
Ev0 said:
I think he means one image for different hardware types, not 'cleaning' an image to be deployed to many machines as with sysprep.
Click to expand...

One image for many hardware types, as i understand it, is what sysprep does, or is that something new to windows 7 sysprep? afterall you can deploy to many machines of the same hardware without ever using sysprep
 
Sysprep just cleans up an image iirc, takes the individual information from a machine out (that's explained really craply btw!). You're right that sysprep is used to image many machines using the same image, but it's not used to sort the hardware types part of this.

The single image for many hardware becomes a pain with HAL stuff from what I remember, it was a good 5 or so years ago I last bothered to try it.
 
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