Deployment - Universal Images / nLite / etc

[Leozack]

I've spent a lot of time reading up lately on this issue, because as far as I was aware everytime you changed hardware (mobo) you had to reinstall XP, and for every type of PC/laptop in a domain you needed a seperate image for that batch of PCs for the same reason.

Now after spending weeks reading up on this stuff it seems people are managing to do away with both those things and yet I'd never even heard about it! My reading has included :

http://adminbromo.blogspot.com/2006/10/universal-ghost-image-guide.html

http://koti.mbnet.fi/olljanat/guides/generic_wds_image_from_xp.php

http://www.leinss.com/uniimg.html

http://www.joshie.com/~jlevitsk/blog/archives/000032.html

http://www.leinss.com/twohals.htm

http://www.tsaysoft.com/mysysprep/

http://www.msfn.org/board/Art-OEM-nLite-and-OEM-Preinstallation-t95271.html

http://www.msfn.org/board/Universal-ATA-driver-Windows-2000-XPSATA-SATA-2-supported-t97153.html

http://www.vernalex.com/guides/sysprep/index.shtml

http://www.vernalex.com/tools/spdrvscn/index.shtml

http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=6735

http://www.msfn.org/board/c-20127nls-error-sysprep-t37573.html&st=40&gopid=742241#entry742241

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1414017

http://blogs.msdn.com/winre/archive/2006/12/12/creating-winre-using-waik.aspx

http://thelazyadmin.com/blogs/thelazyadmin/archive/2007/05/07/windows-deployment-services.aspx

http://thelazyadmin.com/blogs/thela...ng-a-windows-xp-image-in-bdd-2007-part-1.aspx

Sorry to post all that but maybe it will be of use to others to read too Or maybe there is other helpful material I should read?

My issue however is despite reading all of that, I'm still not sure exactly how to go about it. From what I can see it may be as simple as this :

1 - set the HAL on the master PC (physical or virtual) to one any Pc you want can use (this seems to mean set it to APCI PC because they'll all run that, then turn it from wihtout windows device manager to ACPI MultiCPU on newer dualcore PCs after they've taken the image)

2 - add [SysprepMassStorage] section to the sysprep.inf, and add a line for each mass storage driver you'll need eg PCI\VEN_10B9&DEV_5215=%systemroot%\inf\mshdc.inf

However - I'm not sure if that's all it takes, nor am I sure if I have to remoev things from the device manager on the master PC before imaging, nor am I sure what mass storage drivers I'll need for the various PCs and laptops on any given site

I posted this over here

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1457038

and got a few ideas, including UIU
(

http://binaryresearch.net/products/the_universal_imaging_utility)

but that sort of thing is out of the question in my job so I'm back to trying to do it the manual way as long as it's feasible. From what I've read on some of the above links (guides) it is totally doable but I feel I'm just lacking a cutdown short n sweet version. So all help welcome!

_________________________________
Leozack

MakeUniverse($infinity,1,42);

 

[Titleist]

Leozack,

We use Ghost to create and deploy all our sysprepped images. We have one master image for all platforms of pc's (Dell, HP and IBM). With the ghost console you can add all the drivers you need to the "Drivers" folder and upon reboot it basically does "Plug and Play" detecting the different hardware and installing the correct drivers for which ever platform we are deploying. Pretty easy...

John

 

[Leozack]

Hmm I've not used the console before, only ghostcast 8.5 and network booting or bootcds, both of which can be a pain on their own. Is there a miniguide to that anywhere? And doesn't the "plug and play" part (the sysprep PnP option?) add a while to the time?

_________________________________
Leozack

MakeUniverse($infinity,1,42);

 

[Titleist]

You can set up your deployments to PXE boot instead of using a boot CD, and yes it takes a few more minutes rebooting after the image is deployed but on the plus side, you only need one image for everything not multiple images for each make and model.

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/documentation.jsp?pid=52023

John

 

[Leozack]

I've found PXE booting can have issues. I've been using the 3com boot services to do it. I also found some new laptops (a hp compaq 6715a or something) that wouldn't transfer the PXE image to boot on no matter what I did ...

As for that support link, it seems to mostly be about symantec business deployment or something, and I've only come accross ghost so I don't have access to other symantec products.

I thought, judging by those links I posted (have you checked them out?) it was a fairly easy thing to do if you just knew how, without needing other software, and pretty much just sysprep?

_________________________________
Leozack

MakeUniverse($infinity,1,42);