Creating a Workstation Image

[Small_Pig_Dancing]

Hi,

 

We're in need of some help/advice. We're a small Warwickshire LEA school and due to 'budgetary concerns' we've gone from the luxury of paying the LEA to do almost everything for us to now having to get off our backsides and do it all ourselves.

 

We got a small number of new PCs delivered and now we've got to create an image for them.

 

The instructions given to us by the LEA are:

 

1. Create Image.

2. Copy NTUSER.DAT from the account used during the image build to ALL USERS.

3. SYSPREP.

4. Create Ghost image.

5. Deploy image to PCs.

 

Now we're happy with 3, 4 and 5 having done this all before many times, but never for our curriculum network as the county engineers used to create our workstation images for us.

 

We've created an image on one of the PCs which consists of all the software applications that will be needed on them, all updates, and printers and so forth but is there anything else we need to do?

 

Is it literally a case of copying the NTUSER.DAT files from the account used to create the image to ALL USERS?

 

Sorry if these are dumb questions but help will be much appreciated! If anyone has a SOP on image creation it would also be much appreciated!

 

S P D.

[Ex-MGSTech]

you will need to run sysprep if you don't want to have issues with SID's (Unique security identifiers)

You can also use this to remove the workstation name so you don't have to remname every pc on boot (post imaging)

 

There's some good advice here:- Deploying Windows XP

 

and here: How to use the Sysprep tool to automate successful deployment of Windows XP

 

Are you using an OEM copy of XP? (Assuming your deploying XP that is) or a volume licence? if OEM EVERY PC will need to be activated via the web or phone. do your master builds using a VL copy if at all possible as this avoids product activation.

 

Rgds

 

Steve

Edited August 13, 2008 by Ex-MGSTech
SP

[Small_Pig_Dancing]

you will need to run sysprep if you don't want to have issues with SID's (Unique security identifiers)

You can also use this to remove the workstation name so you don't have to remname every pc on boot (post imaging)

 

There's some good advice here:- Deploying Windows XP

 

and here: How to use the Sysprep tool to automate successful deployment of Windows XP

 

Are you using an OEM copy of XP? (Assuming your deploying XP that is) or a volume licence? if OEM EVERY PC will need to be activated via the web or phone. do your master builds using a VL copy if at all possible as this avoids product activation.

 

Rgds

 

Steve

 

Many thanks for the advice. Yes, it's a VL copy of XP Pro we're deploying.

[Michael]

Seeing as you're using a VLK, you should create a folder C:\Sysprep copy all sysprep components in here and create an answer file. It's quite straight forward to follow. When Mini Setup runs (when you restart the workstation after imaging), C:\Sysprep will automatically be deleted (which is very convenient).

 

As for NTUSER.DAT your authority have included this as presumably you're using local profiles and not roaming profiles. I personally would recommend roaming profiles however!

[Ex-MGSTech]

Make sure you use the correct Sysprep as MS changed it with each Service pack!

 

You can extract sysprep and its associated files from the deploy.cab in the support tools folder of the XP CD

 

If you edit the sysprep.inf file after you have run the manager, you can delete the computer name, this way each workstation will ask for a name before it joins the domain.

 

As Michael pointed out if you expand Deploy.cab to C:\Sysprep it will delete the folder as part of running. If you expand it anywhere else it will leave it complete with unenencrypted passwords in the inf file!

 

Do remember to select sysprep build when running setup manager or you'll undo all your hard work by installing a base image of XP

 

it may also be worth running a pre sysprep image as its not unknown for sysprep to hang and leave your master build non-functional.(Speaking from experience here!)

 

Steve