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Hi All, Just wondering how the majority go about setting up a staff laptop? We're looking at giving our staff laptops and replacing the computers in classrooms. Up until now only a few staff have staff laptops, so we've done a solution that works but wondering what people think is best now for moving to mass laptop use. The laptops will be imaged through SCCM/MECM with drivers/software installed through the task sequence. In terms of then users using the device both in school and at home, I'm aware of the 2 options below, but wondered what people think of these and if you guys do anything different: Option 1: Following the domain build, have the staff member log on to their device. Log off of the device. IT log on as admin and load up System Properties > Advanced > User Profiles, select the staff member and convert their profile to local. With the above being done, the staff member can then log on both in school and at home. Option 2 (less ideal, best for home use only really): Following the domain build to install the relevant software, remove the device from the domain. Create a local user account on the device for the staff member to use. I'm looking to enable MECM/InTune Co-Management so that we can use this to manage laptops externally too. What process to people use if none of the above for configuring staff laptops on mass? Also - for the few staff who have laptops already, we have enabled Offline Files and sync their user area to the device, but Microsoft's offline files seems archaic and sometimes just doesn't sync. Not because the files are in conflict (edited both in school and at home) but the file shows 0bytes in the folder for example. Are there any credible alternatives to offline files to help sync staff's user areas to the devices? (They will be bitlocker drive encrypted so security shouldn't be an issue). Thanks in advance.

Hi all, I'm the IT Manager at Twynham School - Do you know if 'it's the thing' to start getting devices onto Windows 11? When Windows 10 came out, we really jumped on that but we've held fire on this one. All our PCs in the IT office are on Win11 but I'm just reluctant to move staff and students over... I assume you can do things like Sysprep in Win11 but what about the start menu import changes as I know they're now based on JSON? I did attempt making an image when Win11 very first came out but it didn't go very well haha! Many thanks!

Hi All, We are a small school deploying a handful of new Lenovo M83 ThinkStations. They have come pre-installed with Win7 Pro. I would like to upgrade one to Win 10 and get it configured then do a simple clone to the other two systems that I need to deploy to the same work area. These systems have their Windows license embedded in BIOS, I believe. Is there a chance in heck that this is going to work for us, be legal, and result in a Windows install that can be activated. If not what do you suggest? I see info on Windows Imaging and Configuration Designer is this what I need? Will this even work without a volume license deal? Thanks. Sorry I am so clueless. Seems like this stuff used to be easier.

Hi all. We bought in a load of Toshiba R50s. They will PXe boot and load the image. Then, once in the Windows PE environment they come up with an error saying that the deployment share is unavailable due to the client not being assigned an IP by DHCP. If we F8 and ipconfig it shows that there is a NIC but 'media disconnected'. This is after updating everything with all the drivers we could find. Here's the kicker: They will image fine as long as we use a single CAT5 splitter, which takes the connection speed down to 100mbps. Could this be a switching issue? We've had the same problem with Duras laptops in the past and just had to forever use a splitter to image them.

Hi, I'm replacing some of our PC hard drives with SSD's and wondered how to transfer what's already on the PC to the new SSD? My question is can i image the current PC which is already connected to the domain by syprepping it and capturing an image with WDS and deploying that image back to the new hard drives?

I'm thinking of purchasing either Norton Ghost Sol Suite 2.5 or Acronis Snap Deploy 4.0, but I am unsure which to go for. Does anyone have any experience of using either? Are there any benefits of one over the other? I have used Norton Ghost 7.0 before and that ran pretty well but I did find it a little rigid with different image files needed for different NICs. Have things moved on?

Hi everyone I have an issue in school where we have 1 new computers in a computer suite develop an issue, so had hard drive replaced. Of course this means the rest of the suite are all fine and working (win 7), however they were put in a rush and no image was created. How the hell can I get an image off one of the working computers to transfer to the pc with a new drive? I mean there are all on the domain and networked. I assume you have to run sysprep, which is fine, but whats next? I can't run PXE boot and use WDS to capture an image, because how do I create the image and where the hell do I save it too? All the existing images are on the WDS server. Anyway, just one of the jobs I wanted to sort over easter. Regards

Hi all I work in a school, im the schools technician, I want some advice before I go ahead and mess with my server I have a novatech server with 3 x 1TB Sata hard disks in it. At the moment im using windows server 2008 R2 with the system disks on raid 1 setup mirrored and the last HDD none raided! I want to be able to raid the 3 hard drives on to a Raid 5 setup. What is the safest way of me imaging the OS on to a portable HDD, raiding the hard disks on raid 5 then putting the OS back?? i have used Clonezilla for imaging and cloning so I'm comfortable in using this. has anyone done this before and successfully?? anyone had any problems or would for see any problems with this idea in the long run??? also what would be the better option, software Raid or Hardware Raid? your comments and opinions are welcome!! thanks Phil.

Hi, I've been doing a fair bit of research into this and come a blank. I'm looking for a simple way to install Windows 7 on a clean machine, customise it with relevant software such as Office etc... and then grab a copy of that image using Clonezilla to deploy using PXE... Not sure how to do it. I've done it using FOG but want to use Clonezilla as our FOG server has run low on space. Can the Clonezilla image be deployed using Windows 2008??

Hi everybody Mandriva Pulse 2 1.3.0 is out, and now allows disk imaging. The principle is quite similiar to CloneZilla and FOG Everything is controlled using a clean web interface. You might want to give it a try (it's a free and open-source product) I think the product is of great quality and needs to be advertised http://pulse2.mandriva.org

I realise that this is a long shot, as I would imagine everyone does this "in house", but has anyone ever paid a third party to deploy an image or to create and deploy an image? Need to get a ball park figure for 20-30 machines that may work with the existing image (which needs updating anyway) but it's more likely to be a creation+deployment job so I can put in a sensible quote. Can't do a per hour charge as it's likely to be way too high and the actual time taken isn't as great as the hours spent because a lot of the time it's waiting for the stuff to load/copy.

Hello there, Long time lurker. First time post. I'm trying to install FOG, and I'm hitting a problem that has been asked on the FOG forums, but never received an answer. Thought I would post here in the hope someone else has some ideas. Basically, we've installed FOG (vers 0.27) via the VM image supplied from their site. This runs on Ubuntu, but because it's an image file, I don't do any Ubuntu install. I've configured FOG exactly as suggested in the install notes. I have not selected it to be a DHCP server as there is one on our network elsewhere. Everything appears to install correctly, but we cannot access the FOG server through the web interface. Trying to do this, simply results in a standard Internet Explorer "cannot display the webpage" error. I can definitely ping the IP address of the new webserver, both from the machine with the VMWare server on, and another machine on the network. I'm at a loss as to what else could be wrong. I've tried reinstalling from scratch, tried different IP addresses, nothing works. Any ideas?! Martin

I know this will be a loaded and detailed question but I’m curious where others sit with regards to their research, testing and the future of their Mac Management in Education and Enterprise? Our Background: We’re primarily a PC College with a small footprint of about 500 Apple computers Currently macOS 10.12 with 10.13 planned for summer deployment Windows and Mac user credentials based on Active Directory Profile Manager (Handling printers, custom settings, power management etc.) Munki (Software Deployment, App Updates, Odd scripts that’re packaged to deploy with Admin rights) Windows based servers with Azure AD (w/InTune) Microsoft SCCM coming into play college wide this summer Our Goal moving Forward: Ability to Image/Manage Macs (Manage Macs running APFS and future macOS’s) SCCM tie in for reporting of software, hardware and other features Ability to push out packages, application updates and macOS updates Ability to deploy and run scripts with ease Local Admin user control (similar idea to LAPS) * I know this is still a new idea for Macs What’re we looking for? With APFS coming into play it’s rumored that when macOS 10.14 is released APFS will be enforced which will be helped along when new hardware that is revised after macOS 10.14 is released. We want a solution that will handle pushing possible base OS, additional software, app installs/updates, macOS updates, scripts, reporting and general setting changes. What we’ve tested/demoed? So far we’ve sat in on demo sessions for JAMF Pro and Parallels Mac Management. So far from a SysAdmin perspective when it comes to SCCM and Mac Management it seems like Parallels has an edge over JAMF for integration. Integrating into SCCM looks almost seamless with reporting and being able to control the Macs. JAMF to me has always seemed to be the top tier Mac Management solution from reading reviews, Reddit and online forums but maybe with the need of Casper being pushed out with the enforcement of Profiles and APFS that top spot has gone down? The need to Install/Image a fresh Base macOS What options are sysadmins using to put a fresh base macOS in place? I know Recovery can install a base OS but if a lab needs a new base OS that can be a heavy demand on bandwidth. Upgrading OS’s year after year seems to be a little less liked than starting with a fresh OS to then build on that with added applications, settings and updates. I never liked upgrading OS’s and I would prefer not to unless there’s no option to easily install a base OS. There are a few tools out there like Imagr that I'm looking into for this purpose. Anyways I know this is a rather detailed post and a bit winded but if you have any input that would be greatly appreciated! I’m continuing to do my research and to evaluate our options but I’m always open and looking to see what others have done and what seems to work. Thank you everyone for your feedback!

Hi, I've successfully managed to image some of our machines but they're getting stuck as they are not applying the Computer Config settings. Checked in gpupdate and they're getting the user settings but not the computer ones from AD. Why? Checked DNS and the forward addresses are there but nothing in reverse lookup. Could this be it? What can i do? Do i need to re-join them to the domain?

We have like many, procured our summer allocation of computers (Dell Optiplex 760 Small Form), they turned up yesterday, we un-boxed them and set them up in our imaging lab. We had 20 on a session and that's when hell was realised! Image just one (forced multicasting for the test) and we get a solid 690MB/Min on ghost 8.2 Image two or more and we get 2-6MB/Min, now we tried this on both multicast & unicast! We tried a few different specs of computers two hpdc5100 on the same cables produced 600+MB/Min, Even the Steps taken so far. Downloaded the latest packet drivers from Intel for the nic in the machine, this yielded no difference at all. Tried them on their own switch with fresh cables, no wimpy switch either, Cisco 2960G, still no joy. Our last solution is not ideal, but we will put the hard drives in to other computers and image. Dare i ask if anyone else has seen such problems before? It feels to me like a faulty network card driver/firmware

It may have been covered before but I just found a rather usefull looking article about integrating device drivers into Windows images. It gives a fairly usefull looking rundown on how the whole driver searching and installation thing works and also includes some truely usefull looking scripts. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc160991.aspx

I'm having an issue where when I boot from a USB and install the operating system with applications I get multiple error codes such as Error code 2 and 1619. However, when I do just an application install without the OS there are no errors, but the applications don't install. I know that error code 2 means it is having trouble finding the file to install but I am taking the exact setup file that I downloaded from my C Drive. Any ideas? Application: LogMeIn is giving error code 1619 Application: Adobe Reader giving error code 2