Automated Installation of winXP and OfficeXP advice needed

[mRgEE]

Hi there,

I have just taken delivery of 100 notebooks that have XP.

When the machines are powered on, the OS needs to be configured manually.

I want to automate the process of configuring the OS for all the machines whilst still being able to give each machine a different name, machine1, machine2, etc.
I also want to be able to automate the installation of officeXP onto all of the machines at the same time. I have read about the various tools such as sysprep and ghost etc. Note that these machines are not on a network but straight out of the box.

What do you think is the best solution to this problem? Use Ghost and just copy the image of one configured machine to all of the others? Maybe use an answer file for the configuration of the OS?

Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[dannyd74]

Even with Ghost or other imaging software, there are minor tasks required for setup. If you use Ghost and Sysprep combined, you can eliminate most of the driver setup, but you're still required to enter the computer name on startup. If you are going to use the image route (Ghost and Sysprep), then you might as well install Office on the image prior to running Sysprep...