replacing 24 systems

If they are all identical machines, you can use Norton Ghost to create an image of a complete system with all the programs, printers, drivers, and patches installed. Then burn the image to the other PC's hard disks.

http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/

As a note, They are all the same systems. If I use Ghost would it not null the ID tag within the Dell systems?

Ghost is a good way to go. If you have a Server as well, use the Corporate Version.

If you are running XP, you will probably want to use Microsoft's sysprep utility which will set them up like new PCs. You do this after you get one PC like you want. You run sysprep, then ghost the image you will roll out to your workstations. You may want to talk to Dell as there are options with that utility that may make things easier like keeping you from typing the Key Number on each PC during first bootup and reactivating.

You can also setup a Microsft SUS Server to update the PCs on the local Lan rather than download each one individually from Microsoft.

Mark is on the money...I just deployed 20 or so systems with XP Pro, and user Norton Ghost very successfully. I built up the first machine with all the hotfixes, and applications we use. Than ran sysprep on that system. At that point the drive is 'new', and can be ghosted over and over. What mark is refering to is an 'answer file' which can contain the XP product code and such. I didnt use an answer file, so i had to Key in the code manually. It saved me TONS of time, and worked great. One bug I experienced was that the ghosted drives wouldnt show an icon for Word, for any logins. I easily added it , but it was weird. Good Luck! Tom

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