SysPrep

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Ender1183

Gawd
Joined
Oct 4, 2006
Messages
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I am a little confused about when and how to use the image of the hard drive. I believe I understand how to get sysprep ready but how does it grab the image of the hard drive i make? I will be using Norton Ghost (or some other free image maker) and a different guide made it sound like I am burning a copy of the drive and some how sysprep uses that to reinstall the image. I wanted to put the image on a separate hard drive so I can run sysprep and use the image of my hard drive when I had it in perfect condition. Also can I run this from a computer that doesn’t have any OS installed yet or does this only work if I am able to run sysprep? Can I just run the image on its own for a new install?

Are there any other guide that may have more detail in them?

Here are the other websites I was looking at:
http://blog.hishamrana.com/2006/02/22/how-to-image-windows-xp-with-ghost-and-sysprep/2/

http://www.vernalex.com/guides/sysprep/index.shtml
 
Sysprep has an option to shut the PC down when it's complete. Then, you use Ghost or something like it, to make an image of that hard drive at that point...either from DOS, or a PE environment. That image file is what you deploy to new drives/computers. Once you lay down the image on a new PC, and boot it up, you'll go through the mini-setup as if it's a new install of the OS.

You really don't need much of a guide at all. Prepare the PC the way you want the image to be, as in software load etc. I always stick a folder on C called Drivers, and put in my common drivers in there. Then run sysprep, and have it shut the PC down. Make your image from the drive at that point, and deploy. Simple as that.
 
sysprep is run as the last thing before shutting down the computer to make the initial image. The biggest thing it does is to reset the SSID of the machine.

Once that's done, you shutdown ( immediately ), and take an image. Then you can blast that image out to other systems, and as soon as it boots up it'll regen it's SSID.
 
I guess thats where i am confused is how to do the image. Do i pull the hard drive and put it in another computer and make the image? Once i have the image how does the new install know where to look for the image? What is the process of deploying it?
 
That all depends on what software you use. I prefer using Ghost on a BartPE CD, and sending the image file up to my network to a server. Then, I boot from the BartPE on any computer I want, and pull the image file down.

If you don't have a network, an external USB drive would work perfectly too. If your image file is small enough to fit, you could burn it onto a BartPE disc on a DVD, and have yourself a restore DVD.

All of your questions can be answered depending on what software you plan to use.
 
Ahh its making more sense now. The process you described seems to be good. I was planing on getting Ghost (what version should i get) and it looks like BartPE is free. Most likely it will be on a networked computer though.

So let me get this straight.
1. Set up a computer the way i want it with all the software i will need.
2. use sysprep and shut down.
3. Create image with Ghost and a cd(or usb drive?) from BartPE that points to the image(this is where i am most confused. How am i creating the image with out starting the preped system again?)
4. Use cd or usb drive on new computers to put image on.
 
You're okay until step 3. I'm not sure how to go about explaning it, but you make the image from outside of the OS. You don't want to boot the drive up after running sysprep, because it will start the setup wizard. You don't want to run that until you have the image loaded on the new system or drive.

Drive imaging has always been straight forward to me, but then again I was shown in 10 years ago in the workplace. Think of it as taking a zip file of your entire drive, so it can be transported to another computer, or used as a backup for your current PC. In step 3 above, you don't point anything to the image because you haven't created it yet. The image can't be created on the drive you are trying to image from (aka, the source drive). That's why you send it to either a networked location or an external drive.

Sysprep and drive imaging are two entirely separate processes, that have nothing to do with each other. Once you get the Pc set up, you run Sysprep and shut the PC down. Now you're done with Sysprep, and you're ready to use whatever drive imaging program you want to create, migrate, and deploy the image.
 
Your steps are pretty good.

setup the PC how you want it
- make your BartPE CD with Ghost on it (or DriveImageXML or some other app)
-- run sysprep...PC shuts down when done
--- boot off the BartPE CD...make sure you have your USB/external drive connected or are able to map a drive from BartPE to some storage source
---- run Ghost and make an image of the computers drive, to an image file on the (1) mapped drive or (2) external/usb drive

when you want to restore the image, boot off the BartPE, then run Ghost and direct it to the image you created, then tell it the drive to place it on.
 
thanks for the help. Ya i am trying to learn this on my own so i am still putting the step together. I'll have to give it a test run to see if i can getting it working. Thanks again for the help !
 
Well i started trying this out but i am getting stuck. Can you go into more detail about the BartPE cd? What am i doing to make the BartPE cd? I am also thinking i will be using DriveImageXML. What am i doing to get DriveImage on the cd?
 
I'm not sure how you'd use the DriveImage program. I only suggested the BartPE program because it works will with Ghost. I would read up on DriveImage XXL and see how it's suggested to be used. It might be able to be run in DOS, which would only need a bootable CD or USB Flash Drive.
 
To make the BartPE CD, you need to download the pebuilder program from nu2.nu

Its a fairly simple process to follow to make the CD, you just need your Windows XP CD (or 2003 CD)
 
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