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Building desktop machines quickly

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by bob.lentini

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My company has a standard set of software that we install on all desktops. I understand that Ghost may help expidite the process, instead of installing it all by hand. I have a few questions: Do all machines have to contain the same hardware? How does Ghost handle machine specific settings like hostname, and licensing?
Is Ghost the best? If not what other packages should I consider?

Kindest Regards,

5 replies

by wim

Use Ghost, it would make your life more easy. There a a few options you can use, using Ghost enterprise, you have multiple solutions (with bootdisks, bootable cd's, multicast, ...) if you use the Ghost 2003 version (not enterprise) you could ghost using a network boot disk and connect to the file server to pick-up your image file...

Ghost has some tools to change username/SID ...
For the licencing, that depends on witch program that requires licencing (for MS and other, it would be enough that you own the licences)...

Hope this helps

by mrjay67

just to add to answer 1. There is a SID/security changer with Ghost but it works just for NT4. For 2000 or XP you should use sysprep that comes with the OS.

As far as licensing, NT/2000 shouldnt be a problem especially if you have volume license. With XP activation becomes a concern. The best and maybe only way is to have a volume license version of the XP OS and any XP (office) software. If you have just retail versions you may run into activation issues.

Ghost enterprise versioncan give alot more options and ways of doing things. However the easiest to use is their more standard versions(i.e. 2003). This gives an easier way to make a network boot disk.

just my 2 cents

Jason

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