Cloning XP to 10 Computers

Format _C:

Format _C:

2[H]4U
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The community center which I volunteer for was recently given 10 computers and they all have a bootleg copy of Windows 7. The community center director wants me to go back to XP. I want to install XP on one computer and clone it to the rest of them. The cloning part I am pretty sure I know (I will use cloneziilla) but the only part I have doubts about is the license information. If I use the key from one of the computers how can I activate all of the other computers, which have a different key? All of the computers are exactly the same with an XP Professional sticker on the top of the computer.
Is there a special way to do what I want to do?

Thanks

PS. Unfortunately I have to use XP as the director does not want Linux and they don't want to put any money into these computers
 
do not clone.
this is just from personal experience.

i used to be an assistant director for an art class at a high school in California.

we even made students sign a form that there would be no way in hell they can make money off their creations through this class.

Microsoft promptly found us and threaten to sue for over 10,000 dollars.

its a small chance. we took it. in the end the road to registering 15 com[puters through student accounts and asking for discount for groups coasts us way less then 10,000 dollars. if u could convince them to go linux do it. otheriwse u are taking ur chances, its copy righted. :/
 
You need to use a tool to change the SID (Security ID), this should not remain the same on 2 PCs on the same network.
Then you will need to enter a new licence key on each clone, this will prevent MS from giving you issues about cloning.

Before progressing too far, make sure that XP has working drivers for your hardware.
You might find it harder to use XP than you thought.


Its easy to find how to change the licence key, google will give you hundreds of results.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=change+xp+licence+key


Changing the SID used to be easy with a tool called NewSID.
MS no longer support this tool and insist you install XP using Sysprep to obtain a new SID.

I found it on Majorgeeks as part of the Microsoft sysinternals suite.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/microsoft_sysinternals_suite.html
 
Are these OEM computers? And is the XP reinstall being done with an OEM disc? If OEM machines, they were all probably activated with the same key anyway.

Otherwise, you can do the cloning, then use something like the Windows Product Key Update Tool to update the license.
 
Yes the computers are pre-built by HP using an OEM XP Professional Disc
and j-sta that appears to be for Windows 7 only
 
If you're have the license for XP, and you are licensed to clone (don't assume you are; it is a right granted by a specific license with microsoft), then all you really need to do is install XP on one and use Sysprep. It will take care of changing all the SIDs.
 
Nenu said:
You need to use a tool to change the SID (Security ID), this should not remain the same on 2 PCs on the same network.
Then you will need to enter a new licence key on each clone, this will prevent MS from giving you issues about cloning.
Click to expand...

The SID doesnt need to be changed and has no bearing on the legality of cloning a machine:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2009/11/03/3291024.aspx


Having said that, really the right way to do this is to use sysprep.
 
Is it a non profit organisation? You can get discounts for licensing, though AFAIK you can't get new licenses for XP. You'd need to exercise downgrade rights.
 
Care to elaborate about not needing the SID?
When I tried, it shut down networking with more than one machine using the same SID.

The legality statement was a ninja edit to counter the post above mine.
 
Nenu said:
Care to elaborate about not needing the SID?
When I tried, it shut down networking with more than one machine using the same SID.

The legality statement was a ninja edit to counter the post above mine.
Click to expand...

I've imaged a *lot* of machines, never using newsid or sysprep (avoiding sysprep isn't a good idea), but haven't had any networking issues. Now now changing the computer name, yeah, obviously that's a problem... but not the same as the SID.
 
Format _C: said:
The community center which I volunteer for was recently given 10 computers and they all have a bootleg copy of Windows 7. The community center director wants me to go back to XP. I want to install XP on one computer and clone it to the rest of them. The cloning part I am pretty sure I know (I will use cloneziilla) but the only part I have doubts about is the license information. If I use the key from one of the computers how can I activate all of the other computers, which have a different key? All of the computers are exactly the same with an XP Professional sticker on the top of the computer.
Is there a special way to do what I want to do?

Thanks

PS. Unfortunately I have to use XP as the director does not want Linux and they don't want to put any money into these computers
Click to expand...

I'd contact MS, as someone else noted they can give huge discounts to NPO, even a donation.
 
Gambit said:
I've imaged a *lot* of machines, never using newsid or sysprep (avoiding sysprep isn't a good idea), but haven't had any networking issues. Now now changing the computer name, yeah, obviously that's a problem... but not the same as the SID.
Click to expand...

Were these machines used on the same network or did they go to different places?
I suppose its down to what happens for the OP.
 
Gambit said:
Yep, same network; did you read the URL I posted?
Click to expand...

No I hadnt, cant believe I missed that :)
Thanks for the info, it answered a few things I was interested to know.

Over 10 years ago, I was contracted to deploy a few hundred workstations for the NHS.
They had a well established/controlled procedure which involved using Ghost images and NewSID.
I put a few machines on the domain without running NewSID and they were denied access, I cant remember the error, perhaps it was purely policy based rather than fundamental.
After changing the SID, the machines didnt show any of the potential issues, maybe we were lucky.

That was a good read.
 
Be careful if you're cloning and make sure you generalized everything. I'll give you a good example...

We use Configuration Manager to push Operating System Deployments. A helpdesk tech thought he would be slick and used Configuration Manager to build a base machine and then snapped an image with Ghost. It seemed to work for him for a while.

Then one day, hundreds of machines around the country started rebooting and re-installing windows. It took some time, but we tracked these machines back to being ones installed by this ghost image. Because the image wasn't generalized enough, when one of the machines were scheduled to be rebuilt, they all thought they were that machine and promptly restarted and began re-installing Windows.

Lots of data logs and lots of downtime.
 
Mister Natural said:
FYI - support for XP ends April 2014. No more patches or updates after that.
Click to expand...


The community director is aware of that

I will start the process this weekend and let the forum know if I run into any problems

Is there a program I can use to clone to multiple hard drives at once?
What I mean is one source drive and three target drives

I say three because Primary IDE Drive 0 is the master image and Primary IDE 1 is one target disk and
Secondary IDE 0 is another target disk and Secondary IDE 1 is also another target disk


PS Now I only have seven computers to do as there was no space to set up the other ones and they are going to be used as spare parts incase something fails
 
Format _C: said:
Is there a program I can use to clone to multiple hard drives at once?
What I mean is one source drive and three target drives
Click to expand...

No.
Even if you could, it would have to run at 1/2 or 1/3 etc the speed as the hard drive being copied from will already be maxed out so there would be zero benefit.
You cannot clone to more than one drive at once.

What you can do is clone one drive and then use the cloned drive in another PC to create another while the original is creating one too.
 
Format _C: said:
Is there a program I can use to clone to multiple hard drives at once?
What I mean is one source drive and three target drives

I say three because Primary IDE Drive 0 is the master image and Primary IDE 1 is one target disk and
Secondary IDE 0 is another target disk and Secondary IDE 1 is also another target disk
Click to expand...

Nenu said:
No.
Even if you could, it would have to run at 1/2 or 1/3 etc the speed as the hard drive being copied from will already be maxed out so there would be zero benefit.
You cannot clone to more than one drive at once.

What you can do is clone one drive and then use the cloned drive in another PC to create another while the original is creating one too.
Click to expand...

wanna bet? I just put together a command in my head to do such using dd and tee.
this post explains it better than I could though.
 
lol yeah its feasible and could work well copying to multiple different SATA controllers simultaneously.
If the clone util were to use standard system commands, you could pipe commands to a replacement exe.
I dont know of any clone util that uses this feature which was my point :)
 
The best way to clone multiple machines is with an imaging client that can multicast. Then you don't need to open the machine up and take out the hard drive. Just patch them into the network, boot to a disk (or pxe, whatever) and connect to the multicast server. When they are all ready to go, kick of the image and 20 minutes later all 10 are done.

Of course... 10 is a small amount of machines to be worrying about. If you're developing a process to reuse, it might be worth it...
 
I'd use WDS, assuming I had access to a server. Knowing that it's XP and a community center I'd want the ability to re-image quickly and easily...

Prep your image carefully, generalize with sysprep, capture to server, deploy and input key from sticker.
 
The community center has no server but all of the computers will be connected to the internet with a good antivirus

I will keep a copy of the image

How do I use Sysprep to properly generalize the image?

I want each computer to have the same name with a number after it
 
If you want a pretty easy method, get Acronis True Image, it's cheap, and makes things easy.

Step 1: Find an HP OEM XP disc (this shouldn't be hard, and ebay should have them if you have trouble.)

Step 2: Boot off CD, load windows from scratch like you normally would, install drivers, run Windows Update (don't install Window Media Player - this screws with sysprep on XP), install any software you want on all machines.

Step 3: Put True Image boot disk in, run Sysprep, using the OOBE option (it's in the dropdown of sysprep), have it reboot when finished.

Step 4: Upon reboot, choose Acronis disk to boot off of, choose Backup option, backup entire disk, choose location (USB or network location).

Step 5: Insert Acronis disk in all other workstations, boot off it, choose recover, choose the image file you created, restore. Done.

I'm sure there are plenty of other solutions out there that do this, but this is the one I've used successfully, and they include all the drivers required, which is a nice bonus.
 
Nenu said:
No I hadnt, cant believe I missed that :)
Thanks for the info, it answered a few things I was interested to know.

Over 10 years ago, I was contracted to deploy a few hundred workstations for the NHS.
They had a well established/controlled procedure which involved using Ghost images and NewSID.
I put a few machines on the domain without running NewSID and they were denied access, I cant remember the error, perhaps it was purely policy based rather than fundamental.
After changing the SID, the machines didnt show any of the potential issues, maybe we were lucky.

That was a good read.
Click to expand...

:cool:
 
Are the PCs the same model? or same specs?

If they are the same model then you don't even need to sysprep. But if some of them are mix AMD/intel or single core and dual core then even sysprep won't do because of the different HAL.

I think its a good time to learn about deployment, take a look at MDT (microsoft deployment toolkit).
 
OK I finally got a chance to so the restore of the image I made and everything is working 100%
I used sysprep and all I had to do was type the XP keycode that was on the top of the each computer and Windows activated correctly
I also am keeping a copy of the image on my computer at home just in case one of the computer gets a virus or somebody screws it up somehow

I will see what happens now in April 2014 when the support for XP ends

and at Stoly
Yes all of the PCs are the same brand and model
 
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