Image laptop to DVD for use as recovery disk.. help

[adamchapman]

We have purchased 2 laptops this year to give to pupils under the school's 'rewards system'.

We are giving them out under the condition that we will not be carrying out any repairs etc to the system once handed over - as we will become a free laptop repair centre in no time!

Is there a way that I can take an image of the machine (as it comes from the factory) and then save this to a DVD, that can EASILY be restored by the user if the machine needs it in future?

We thought of taking a WDS image and buring to DVD, and then issuing a WDS boot CD - would this work?

Any ideas appreciated!....

[rogerblue]

MCDST and you need to ask? lol

[SC-UK]

I always do this when I buy a new laptop as the trend for not issuing recovery CD's or even OS media is starting to grow. Never had a problem with it and WDS would be my preferred method as well. Obviously it will depend on the size of the image as a lot of manufacturers fill new systems with so much rubbish these days.

Tom

[Brpilot99]

Didn't they come with recovery discs?

[FN-GM]

Or did it come with a recovery partition.

[mossj]

More than likely a recovery partition

[edwardjrobertson]

You could create an image with Microsoft ImageX and stick it on a Windows PE dvd

You can fully automate the reformat of hard drive and apply image

[tumbleweed]

Free & Simple, worth looking at .

Create Recovery Clonezilla

[srochford]

You could create an image with Microsoft ImageX and stick it on a Windows PE dvd

You can fully automate the reformat of hard drive and apply image

That's what I'd do; it's a trivial batch file to do a diskpart to wipe everything and create a new partition and then an imagex /apply to put the .wim file back.

Doesn't cost anything and is using standard MS tools.