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

Re:Unattended is good

[jmobley]

Unattended is definitely the best system I've used so far.

And actually, you can do that now with the service packs from Microsoft. At least that's what I'm doing with our windows 2000 and 2003 server installations. I have the service packs, as well as all post-SP patches and updates, integrated into the specific versions I386 folder. After that I just commented everything in the updates.bat file and all of my installs end up fully patched out of the box. Coupled with the Perl and VB scripts you can write and fire off during the installation, it saves me loads of time during post-install configuration. At some point I'd like to extend the system to generate customized post-install scripts on the fly, so that I can create fully custom installs on a per client basis.

I've got some bookmarked links to the MS knowledgebase that explains how to integrate the service packs and individual patches, but they're not on me at the moment. Should be pretty easy to find by searching for "integrate service packs" on the MS site.

The key feature for me with Unattended is the ability to integrate drivers into the I386 folder so they are available during install. This is what enables such a wide variety of chipsets to be supported from a single installation point.

A coworker of mine suggested a way of using ghost by performing a windows install on a single machine, then powering down the system right before it boots for the first time and goes through its hardware detection. Then taking the hard drive, mounting it on another machine, copying the I386 folder and all necessary drivers to the hard drive, and making a ghost image of that drive. Supposedly when you ghost another machine, windows should boot for the first time, detect all the hardware and load the appropriate drivers. I've never tried this, however, so I have no clue if it works well or not. Sounds like it could work though.