XP installation on multiple PCs

[hoss6800]

Hi,

Just been asked by a friend to help him, install xp on about 50 desktops.
These PCs used to belong to a government organisation and therefore come without HDD.
They have been delivered to a school to be used by students.
My friend is helping the school as a volunteer and wants to install XP and office on all the PCs.
School have licence for XP and office.
HDDs have been ordered and arriving soon.
What I suggested to him is to install and update one PC, then clone the HDD and copy it to other HDDs.
Can anyone suggest a better way or recommend good free software for this task.

Thanks

 

[morilihochili]

You can successfully clone Windows systems as long as the hardware is identical (or very close to it). There are a couple of things you may need to address separately.

First, in a Domain or Workgroup, each system must have a unique SID (Security Identifier), or you will run into problems with resource permissions. Many cloning programs provide a way to address this issue. Some will handle it "on-the-fly" and some provide a separate utiltiy that you run at the end of the process to generate a random SID. If not, Microsoft provides a free utility for this purpose.

Second, each cloned system will now have the same Windows serial number. We had an enterprise license for windows, so our Windows serial number was expected to show up on literally thousands of systems, but if you have individual licenses, you will need to update the registry on each system to ensure each has its own valid Windows license.

OR

You can use Microsoft's SysPrep utility which will address these and other issues.

Here's a link detailing how to use SysPrep:
How to use the Sysprep tool to automate successful deployment of Windows XP

Finish setting up the first (Master) system. Once it's "perfect"...

1. Run Windows Defrag program to defragment the disk.

2. Run CHKDSK /F to clean up any minor disk errors that might interfere with the cloning process.

3. Re-boot and allow CHKDSK to complete.

4. Clean up any .CHK files from the root directory.

5. Run SysPrep.

6. Shutdown Windows

Now, you can clone your master system to create the file you'll use to load the remaining systems. SysPrep will setup your cloned image so that it works like a preloaded system you might purchase at the local computer store. When you boot up the cloned system, it'll even prompt you for the Windows serial number if you've set it up properly.

Just remember... DON'T boot up the master system until after you've cloned it or you'll undo everything SysPrep has setup. If you need to make a change to the master system, you will need to repeat the above steps again before cloning.