setting up a PC for cloning

[Dagk]

Hi,

I am setting up an XP PC which will be cloned by Ghost and rolled out to 50 other PC's. I would like to configure the original PC so that the desktop background and MS Office toolbar are setup in a particular way. I would also like to set the I.E. home page. I realise that their is a folder called "All Users" within documents and settings which allows the setting up of favourites and desktop icons for all users but no folders for carrying out the above. Does anyone know how to configure the above settings as a specific default setting. Thanks.

 

[LadyH]

If you're making a ghost image of that machine, those settings will be transferred to the other systems. Unless I'm not reading your message right, you won't have to worry about any settings being changed on those systems.

pcheather@yahoo.com

 

[ANAKIN]

you'll need to use Sysprep to remove SIDs with -mini & - reseal switches on the command line. see Mucrosoft knowledge base for specs. be aware sysprep screws the database for passwords so recovery console won't work if you had installed it. mucrosoft has a fix for this also, but you may need to leverage your corporate licensing to get them to get it to you, it's not available for simple downloading. also there is a registry hack to force sysprep to leave the desktop shortcuts intact. (sysprep uses desktop icon wizard to cleanup all your hard work). I use a dummy location to store the desktop icons i want to retatin and then copy them back to all user\desktop after the mini setup. favorites are also an issue, I copy the shortcuts I want from the dummy folder into default user\favorites. be very, very aware that any significant change in hardware and your clone image is worthless. unless you can ensure all 50 units have absolute identical hardware, get ready for version 2 of your clone (again built from scratch) (note: NIC cards acount for 4-6 points out of 10 to trigger activation problems.) good luck

 

[linney]

You can have a look at this incase it is what you are thinking of.


HOW TO: Create a Custom Default User Profile (Q305709)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q305/7/09.asp

Q314828 The Microsoft Policy Concerning Disk Duplication of Windows XP Installations

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q314/8/28.asp

 

[minisi]

Don't use the All users folder use Default User folder instead, once you've configured the machine how you want it, copy the profile you are using over the Default user profile. The once you have cloned the machines the first time a user logs on they will take on the default user settings

 

[LadyH]

One side note...we use ghost to clone 100's of machines (literally) each semester. We do not use the systprep to remove sids prior to or after the imaging. I believe the primary reason we have no trouble is the fact we are in a novell network, not NT....if you are in the nt network, however, you will have to use the sysprep tool for the sids...ghost used to have a utility to do this after the imaging, speciffically for NT, i'm not sure if it is available at their site anymore or not...

pcheather@yahoo.com