Set up a batch of laptops - painlessly

[Little-Miss]

Got about 15 HP laptops for staff that I need to setup. Is there a quick way of doing this?

 

I don't want them on the domain, too much faff and doubt they come back in regularly enough. Was going to use the OEM license but do have VL available.

 

Want to install: office 2012, Target Tracker, VLC player, Sophos, tweak settings and remove bloatware.

 

Is there a way to just clone one and stick it on another? I have ghost available but ive disabled it's PXE boot as I use WDS.

 

Probably an obvious answer here. Hoping to avoid Faffing with WDS.

[ihaveaproblem]

I'd just set one up, capture an image with wds and deploy as normal.

Just remove the parts from sysprep that would usually join them to a domain

[SteveB_NI]

I'd just set one up, capture an image with wds and deploy as normal.

Just remove the parts from sysprep that would usually join them to a domain

 

That's what I would do myself as well, or you could use Clonezilla to image the hard drive if you use VL key.

 

I imaged our standalone workstations using Clonezilla - easy to use and very quick to restore image.

[alttab]

Got about 15 HP laptops for staff that I need to setup. Is there a quick way of doing this?

 

I don't want them on the domain, too much faff and doubt they come back in regularly enough. Was going to use the OEM license but do have VL available.

 

Want to install: office 2012, Target Tracker, VLC player, Sophos, tweak settings and remove bloatware.

 

Is there a way to just clone one and stick it on another? I have ghost available but ive disabled it's PXE boot as I use WDS.

 

Probably an obvious answer here. Hoping to avoid Faffing with WDS.

 

if you use the OEM license then i don't whether you'll run into activation issues when deploying ?

 

The question mark is because i genuinely don't know if this is an issue or not. It could be you can do it that way (although i can't imagine it's painless) and use the VAMT tool to change keys to a volume licensed method of activation later.

 

the advantage of deploying with KMS is that you don't need to do anything on the client side, by default win7 will use the client KMS key and it'll start activating once you hit 25 win7 clients without each one needing to be on the domain. That's my understanding of it anyway.

[twin--turbo]

If you can still do a Ghost MultiCast then that will speed things up too

 

Rob

[tmcd35]

if you use the OEM license then i don't whether you'll run into activation issues when deploying ?

 

The question mark is because i genuinely don't know if this is an issue or not. It could be you can do it that way (although i can't imagine it's painless) and use the VAMT tool to change keys to a volume licensed method of activation later.

 

Just to clarify (answer) this point - if you take an image of any Windows system installed with an OEM key you WILL run in to problems when you deploy the image en-mass. Specifically you will have to enter and activate the unique OEM key for each and every machine after you have deployed the image. Probably not an issue for 3-4 machines but 15, 30 or more and its a right pain.

 

Always, always, always use the VL copy of windows if you have it available it save a lot of headaches later on!

 

Also, on the subject of licensing - ALL machines must have an OEM copy of windows and a sticker on the base. Doesn't matter which version or how old, but it must be there (and be for that machine - not transferred from another machine). You then need to purchase a new VL for each new machine you are deploying to (again you cannot transfer Windows licenses between machines). A VL will allow you to run any version of Windows up to and including the version the VL is sold under - regardless of which version of Windows the underlying OEM license was for.

[tmcd35]

If you can still do a Ghost MultiCast then that will speed things up too

 

Rob

 

If @Little-Miss is using WDS then that is also able to deploy images using MultiCast sessions.

[Little-Miss]

Hmm Clonezilla maybe an option, never used it before...

[penfold]

I used clonezilla for 20 stand alone laptops last year. Ended up just sticking the image on a USB HDD and imaging over that as I didn't have the room to image them all over the network at once anyway. But I found Clonezilla pretty straight forward to use.

[Little-Miss]

Im happy to do it that way. Just get it started and leave it to it.