Sysprep gurus?

[evilsatan]

These machines are only going to be used as web portals and as time freeze is on I have disabled all updates. I can then manually disarm time freeze and update if necessary. We are using Eset Endpoint Security though so I will try to set up a schedule over midnight where they turn on, disarm, update certain apps, rearm and shutdown.

[evilsatan]

Tested my image and works perfectly. I have used an unorthodox method to activate but it works and the final result is legit as these are OEM Win 7 Home premium machines and the key that is installed is the same one Dell used originally at the factory.

I wrote/edited some batch files, one took care of deleting the unattend.xml files, installing the OEM certificate and licence key, that batch file then deletes itself and the certificate file. Another script was borrowed from elsewhere then I edited it so that my apps were added in the right order to the taskbar, that then deletes itself. Another was borrowed from elsewhere to get Teamviewer to refresh it's ID so it is unique, that then deletes itself. To get the batch files to run properly they had to run as admin so I made a shortcut of them, set the shortcuts to run as admin, placed shortcuts in the startup folder with the certificate and scripts on the desktop, added lines to the scripts to delete the shortcuts too.

Dirty way of doing it but it works and is totally automated. Just have to make sure the sysprep images are only used on these machines so the activation is legit but it will only be me using them so I can ensure that myself.

[Over Carl]

Trust me, try my method with no xml file and you will see imaging with sysprep is a piece of cake.

The runonce registry key can be handy for automating stuff to run once to tidy up, but I don't know if you will get any joy using that mechanism to run as admin.

I believe technically in the EULA, it says only the enterprise version purchased with VLK is allowed to be imaged, although even if this is the case Sysprep didn't appear to break SLIC2.1 basied OEM activation when I used to be restoring sysprepped images all the time.

[evilsatan]

I will give it a try next time. I have tried that way in the past but it never seemed to work completely as expected which I put down to me missing out the answer file :/

[MartinC]

I know I am new to the forum and this is a very late post,but I thought I would post it just in case anyone finds it helpful for thefuture.

I used to use Ghost for imaging our PCs but when I moved allour workstations across to Windows 7 (with the new Sysprep limit) I actuallywent into full Microsoft mode to sort my issue, I now use MDT to roll out animage taken by ImageX or its replacement WIM command and it works well.

Also I was interested in rolling out the same image in a DR scenarioor in our small offices with no MDT servers, at which point I used ImageX orits replacement WIM command to create the file, and then just put it on a USBstick along with the original ISO and replaced the INSTALL.WIM with my newimage and bobs your jolly old, bet of both worlds you can install using thenormal installer for windows but once installed it has all the additional itemsyou have installed and amended.

The other benefit I found from MDT, I build a base WIM filewith the above process and then inject it into a ISO on my MDT server as a baseimage, and then I use MDT to install things like different versions of officelike 2010 or 2013 and a selection of other items like acrobat etc.. so at theend of the day you can not only image many PCs with the same image, but at timeof pushing it out you still have some flexibility and options to custom asneeded.

If anyone finds this helpful or wants more info, just let meknow.

Thanks
Martin

[evilsatan]

Thanks Martin, always interesting to see what others do Welcome to DF, I have a feeling you will fit in just fine.

[WinOutreach2]

One thing to remember is that while MDT can deploy any images that have been prepared in WIM format, images that have been captured from complete systems (including drivers, applications, etc.) greatly hinder the flexibility that MDT can provide. For this reason it is a recommended practice to create all new images in virtual machines and with minimal installed applications. Ideally a base image should include only tweaks that cannot be produced any other way (for example CopyProfile to create a default user profile through Sysprep).

MDT can separately manage applications and drivers so that one image can apply not just to computers requiring slightly varying applications, but completely different hardware platforms and configurations.

For anyone that isn’t familiar with MDT, I highly recommend checking out the Windows 8.1 Deployment Jump Start at the Microsoft Virtual Academy. This session explores MDT with some of the leading deployment experts and really helps to illustrate its capabilities and use.

Brandon
Windows Outreach Team- IT Pro
Windows for IT Pros on TechNet

[Over Carl]

That is very true.

However, for me there wasn't really much point creating images without sw or drivers - the whole point in imaging was to cut that massive time killer.

[evilsatan]

I had identical machines so essentially I wanted to ghost them for quick restoration but as there were quite a few to set up I thought I would try my hand at Sysprep.

Thanks for the info though