Best way to duplicate Win2000 disk to other systems?

[Mortalkind]

I need to install WIN2K and other software on 4 computers and make the installations as near to identical as possible. However, each computer is different. What would be the best way to do this short of installing everything seperately on each computer?

I know that sysprep may be able to do this but the microsoft docs are not clear. Bascily I would like to set up 2000 and all common applications on one computer and clone the drive to the others. It would be easiest if I could create the image on a CD then boot the CD on each computer and have the image copied to the hard drive. The image may be to big to put on a CD though, in which case I would like to just pull the hard disks and copy the image onto each hard disk from the original computer.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[darranagl]

You can use a product like Nortons Ghost with the SYSPREP tool if the PCs are the same hardware.

The main thing to remember is that the HAL (Hardware Abstract Layer) must be that same on all the PCs ie the motherboard, disk controller (IDE or SCSI) must be the same. You can have different video cards, network cards etc.

If all your PC's have the same motherboard etc you can create an image with the SYSPREP tool and then either share the folder (if networked) or burn the image onto a CD.

You can then use a Win98 boot disk (to get CD support) or a Network Boot disk to start the PC to be imaged. Ghost will fix on a floppy and will put the image onto the PC.

If your PC's are all different there are two options.

1: setup a RIS server, you will need Win2k Server, DHCP, DNS etc (you don't want to go there)
2: install it all from the CDs, one at a time.


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[Mortalkind]

Thanks darranagl,

I've been looking at the Microsoft docs some more. They talk about the possible HAL's as being:

ACPI Multiprocessor PC
ACPI Uniprocessor PC
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC
MPS Multiprocessor PC
MPS Uniprocessor PC
Standard PC

Is this all there is to the HAL's being the same? If all PC's are ACPI PC's then are the HAL's the same or is there more to it?

By the way. Just for future reference MS has a upgrade to Sysprep (1.1) which allows for use between different types of controllers, SCSI to IDE, PCI IDE to Intel IDE, etc.

 

[rblue]

Also pay attention to IDE chipsets. A Win2k image created on a box with an Intel chipset will bluescreen (inacessable boot device)if you try to install it in a box with a VIA chipset, etc.

 

[Guest_imported]

Can you install Windows 2000 Professional on two different computers using the same cd key???