PC: Image Build

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StarsFan4Life

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
472
For the past several months, I have been using ImageX to apply standard images to machines. I actually never BUILT the standard images...and had asked several times from the person who built these to show me how he did it.

Last week, the person who built these images is no longer with our company. Our images are WAY out of date and run old software, drivers and still have WinXP SP2.

Now, we have about 6 different Dell models that we currently use in our company:

GX260
GX270
GX280
GX620
745
755

I do realize that I will need to "build" the PC to reflect what we want the standard image to be. This I have already done (installed XP, latest drivers, latest software, latest SP's) for each model. The next step is "creating" the image of the machine to place on the server that we hold the images at. This is where I am not sure what was done or what software was used.

Can anyone help me with this? Again, I do not know any of the software that was used to create the image. I can learn it....and from what I understand it is not hard at all. With that said, we build these images based upon 2 partitions (C: and D:). The C: drive has all of the software installed on it. The D: drive (after we configure the registry to point here) contains the users "Documents and Settings" for each profile created. We do this in case the user stores work files on the pc locally instead of the network and the C: drive becomes corrupted.

Anywhoo...any help would be greatly appreciated. If anyone suggests any other methods to build/configure/apply images to machines, it would be greatly appreciated!
 
StarsFan4Life said:
This is where I am not sure what was done or what software was used.

Can anyone help me with this? Again, I do not know any of the software that was used to create the image. I can learn it....and from what I understand it is not hard at all.
Click to expand...

Have you looked at the Norton Ghost software. I think there is a version of it such that you can make images of your machine and store those images on a server somewhere, and then you can retrieve those images over the network whenever you add another GX270 or something.

Aren't the GX270's the one with the infamous leaky capacitors?
 
Ghost will do what you want, create and cast images either over the network or booting from USB hard drive or CD/DVD.

Clonezilla is free and will do those things though I think it requires a dedicated server.

You're right that they're easy to learn:
Boot from media
take image
reboot


boot from media
cast image
reboot
rename / join domain
add printers
 
Please google imagex... You can capture an image. You boot into WinPE, and you can capture the .wim image using imagex to wherever you want.

Windows Deployment is what you are looking for if you want to continue with what you are doing I suspect.

I wouldn't bother buying Norton Ghost or similar. So far from what I've seen, Windows Deployment/WinPE with imagex, diskpart etc. is enough to get the job done. It's quick and easy.

Ps: you can actually mount the file system with imagex and make changes to files etc. from there if you wish. You could also just image a fresh machine, make changes and capture the image. Oh yea, make sure you sysprep your machine before shutting down and capturing an image.
 
Is there a good guide/step-by-step on Imagex? It looks as though our current server that hosts our images took a nose dive....so we are starting over from scratch. This gives me the perfect chance to build an imaging and deployment system myself.

What is the easiest and best system out there. Mind you, after the images are created, I will have users in offices apply the images for me, unless I can deploy these to any machine at any office at anytime.
 
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