Creating XP Disk Images w/ Company Applications?

-ryan asks: "After a decade as a software engineer, I decided to try my hand at being a System Administrator, to help a friends business. Unfortunately every single computer in this office is on different hardware (all custom built), all running different versions of Windows, and new employees come and go regularly. I'd like to create a single disk image with all of the company software pre-installed and configured to save time setting up new boxes and rebuilding old ones. Problem is, you can't just ghost Windows XP onto different hardware (I remember this working years back). Is there some way that I can (without purchasing hugely expensive 'client-management solutions) slipstream a bunch of company software into a Windows XP install disk?" "I remember trying to set up a system image for XP a while ago, and some machines will boot the ghosted system image with errors about missing drivers (which is easy to fix) but some won't even boot without a BSOD.

If I can pull off a slipstream of my own custom XP install (with applications), I wouldn't mind having to install system specific drivers. The company leadership is very pro Linux and wants to move all of the desktops over, but this year it's not feasible to do such a migration. So until then.... any ideas?"

Comments

After the Holy Grail?

[GundamFan]

Well this is the one thing that XP can't do in my experince... but I have been where you are before.

What I did was take an inventory find out how many of each model I had, then I found out which models would take the image I had (even if not compleatly) and cleaned those up to create a new image for that model. on system that where too diffrent I upgraded to XP (to maintain as many settings and apps as I could) and used that with some cleaning as a base for an image for those model.

At first my boss wanted me to use sysprep and maintain one image (like he had done with 2000 before I came) but after about a week of experimenting it became clear that creating an universal image would take way to long if it was even possible.

I know that this isn't the cleanest or shortest process but last I heard they are still using my images so I must have done something right.

Hope that helps.