[Pc_Support] WinXP + SysPrep + Norton Ghost basics

[Damien McKenna]

Thanks Bryan.

> Correct.  Sysprep is NT5.0+'s "Registry-SAM-SID cleaner" that prevents
> multiple NT systems from the same image from having an identity crisis
> when they see each other on the network.

OK, that's what I was thinking.  I really should have taken a
Windows2000 Administration class while at college, just for
knowledge-sake.

> > All of our machines are identical (same model 'n everything) and I
> > want to avoid as much post-imaging fiddling as possible.
> 
> You can automate some of this with your cloning tool, or 
> various Sysprep scripts.

Any recommendations on what to use?  We're using OEM OS licenses, i.e.
not a volume license which makes things a little more tricky.

I'm having fun here, though struggling with the fact that Ghost 8 Corp
Edition doesn't let you create a boot *CD*, only boot floppies.  Major
pain.  And you don't get the PXE server with the evaluation copy so you
can't see how well that works.

This is, again, part of the 13-system installation I'm working on.  I've
evaluated Acronis Snap Deploy which is fairly good but misses out on
some things, like not identifying systems based on the MAC so you can't
tell the PXE server which systems to install if they don't have an OS
install already, and I also can't get the deployment system to work at
all, it won't recognize the two machines available to it.

Norton Ghost is better for the most part, but having an incomplete eval
installation is causing problems for me.  Right now I'm installing
Microsoft's Remote Installation Services to see if I can manually add
the Ghost PXE image.

And I thought I'd given up this stuff when I moved into web development?
Pah ;)

-- 
Damien McKenna - Web Developer - Damien.McKenna at thelimucompany.com
The Limu Company - http://www.thelimucompany.com/ - 407-804-1014
#include <stdjoke.h>