Discussion Locked

Imaging Windows XP

0 helpful
13 replies
Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

I work for a school district and I have just received 200 computers that I want to image. They all have WinXP on them. I want to create a image and install it on all of them. Has anyone ever done this with WinXP and been successful? I use Norton Ghost to image the computers with Win2K. Is there any known problems with doing this the WinXP?

Thanks
Russell Harris

13 replies

by jschein

No issues... as long as the systems are identical... no problems, just as with 2k.

Only issue is make sure you do a sysprep on the system prior to imaging it or you will have to do the SID Program on the initial boot to create a unique SID for that pc.

Good luck.

by thechas

Just a side note.

Your situation fits the intended purpose of the sysprep tool available from Microsoft.

You can setup a "reference" system, and run sysprep before imaging the PC.

Microsoft even has several pages of information on using the tool.

Chas

by w2ktechman

I will say that Ghost should work fine. But there are a few problems with it. First, on each PC you should run a SID scrubber, and M$ does not recommend any way except sysprep.
Other issues will be computername etc. All minor issues, but if you do not scrub the SID M$ will not support the PC's because they have found issues when many PC's have the same SID.

by blitzsonik

This works just fine. I do it almost daily. I'd say it works better with XP and you won't need to do a sysprep if you are running a Active Directory because the SSID is generated automatically when you join the domain. I have done this hundreds of times and never once used sysprep.

by chris

Shouldn't be a problem - I've done it a few times, but using PQ Drive Image, not Ghost. Check the legalities though - I had a problem and contacted the tech support who said technically the app waqsn't meant to be used in this way unless you had licences for each machine you imaged to - don't know if this app-lies to Norton though.

This discussion is closed to new replies.