Simple free-or-cheap tool for rolling out Windows XP + standardized apps to a small computer lab?

Question

I manage a high-school computer lab with ~40 machines, have old PCs with varying hardware. I need to roll out Windows XP + a standard set of apps and settings for new machines, and to re-format older machines.

What tool is available to help with this? It doesn't have to be perfect, but if it minimizes the time I set in front of machines installing programs and tweaking settings, it's a win.

Answer 1

Remote Installation Services and/or Windows Deployment Services. One or the other comes "free" with Windows Server (RIS with Windows Server 2003 SP1 or earlier; WDS with Windows Server 2003 SP2 or later), and is pretty easy to set up and use. :-) Requires your computers to support PXE booting, however.

Answer 2

You can create "Unattended Install" disks for XP to setup configurations, base software and more. There's info on this at http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/ .. just write a lot of CDs and pop em in the drives. The installs go automatically from start to finish as the name implies. You just have to cross your fingers and hope they actually do.

Answer 3

Almeza MultiSet (http://www.almeza.com/content/view/31/41/) or nLite (http://www.nliteos.com/guide/).

Answer 4

If you're dealing with similar (well, exactly the same), configurations, the answer is Microsoft Sysprep & Norton/Symantec Ghost.

What you're essentially looking for is taking settings for a particular computer and cloning them to different hardware. nLite and unattended installs are great and fantastic for getting the OS up and running, but they suck when it comes to getting individual applications to very specific settings. Sysprep & Ghost clone the entire setup, which saves mucho time.

The process is fairly straightforward:

1. Build one computer, ground up.
2. Create a single user on the computer, named 'user' or something similar.
3. Log into user and do all your application installs, customizations, and updates.
4. Add drivers for all of your additional machines into the windows drivers folder.
5. Run sysprep.exe, select the use minisetup option.
6. Sysprep shuts down the machine, then use ghost to make a hard disk image.
7. Clone the disk image to the other machines using the ghost network copy or serial cables if necessary.
8. On boot, the machines will prompt you for a new network name. (Essential for lab environments. Can't have 40 computers all named LABMACHINE-1.)

There are a lot of minor steps along the way, but this is the way to go. I will also say that this is more IT then programming, but <3 IT.

Benefits:

1. Used heavily in academia.
2. Works on super-low end machines.
3. Sysprep and the entire process is hella documented.

Answer 5

Sysprep isn't doing the trick. Using your instructions I'm 0 for 2, with permissions and settings trashed on the original cloned machine, and death-at-boot on the 1st test machine. Having come this far, I'd say it's not an effective solution, in the sense that with our 10 machines, it's cheaper time-wise to keep a paper checklist of things to install.

Answer 6

Try net-runna Enterprise.

It does so much more than just deploying operating systems. Typically in a lab environment you want to be able to return the desktops to a known good state. This product can be configured to do this on each boot and take minutes as it is file based, not sector based. It's not free, but worth the money as this it will save you hours of watching progress bars.

Answer 7

Sysprep works nice if you are installing it the OS on the same hardware. However if you have diffrent builds your going to have to install the drivers for each one by hand.

Answer 8

Don't have a tool that will do what you want, but if you end up having to do the install on each machine by hand, you might find Project Dakota helpful to bring the machines fully patched and up to date.

Answer 9

Hmmm, just came across FOG, which may suit your needs.