In less than 10 steps, can you set up all the PCs in your office with all required software? Here’s one way:
- Set up a Windows PC with all required programs
- Navigate to %WINDIR%system32sysprep and run the following command from command line:
sysprep /generalize - Pick options to Generalize and to Shutdown
- Reboot into some decent imaging software
- Make an image of the hard disk and partitions to an external USB
- Apply that image to as many PCs as you have software licenses for
- Upon bootup, you will have to re-enter proper Windows key for that hardware, and activate
- Also, you will need to set proper computer name and join domain if needed
- Done!
Sysprep /generalize will essentially make the image “non-unique” to that system, meaning it can easily be imaged to other hardware without activation or driver headaches.
Sysprep must always be run from the %WINDIR%system32sysprep directory
So are drivers not included in the image? Meaning you'd just have to install new drivers correct? We've got 5 or 6 different hardware configurations and generally add a new one for every new Intel processor, so a system image that is flexible would be awesome.
Also, I'm guessing it doesn't include user profiles?
Thanks for the tip!
It actually retains user profile info, but it forces a domain un-join to occur. If the hardware isn't too dissimilar you may not need to install drivers. Otherwise you could pre-install drivers before running sysprep. Upon first boot it reinitializes drivers based on the current hardware.