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At work there are about 40 DELL PC's - half of them are Windows Vista and other half are Windows 7. Some of the DELL PC's are 220s and 230s model.

If I want to re-install Windows then I can use a Recovery/Recovery disk on any Dell PC's (220s or 230s). It take too long to complete the setup, for example - after re installing the Windows then I need to install the drivers, update windows, install IE9, create default users account and so on. It take about 3 hour to complete setup!

I am looking for a solution Where I can create an Image of windows (with driver and completed setup) and then I use same Image it on any PC's at work?

If one of the PC need reinstalling - I would like to reinstall via network (LAN) by grabbing the Image? Is there something that before booting into windows - computer check something via network which can download the Image?

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  • 3 hours for that what you described is not bad Jun 15, 2012 at 22:07
  • @RobertNiestroj 3 hours is not bad when you at home.. when you at work with 40 PC's - that is different story. Time is money. Jun 15, 2012 at 22:29
  • possible duplicate of Clone Hard Disk Software
    – Mokubai
    Jul 13, 2012 at 22:50

6 Answers 6

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Look into prepping and building one machine with a standard image. Then you would use the built-in sysprep tools in Windows, to image that PC to (likely) a USB drive. Using this USB drive, you then make an ISO image of the USB, and upload that ISO to your deployment server.

For driver support you'll want to inject your already built and sys-prepped image with any additional drivers you might need. You can search on Dell's support site for your specific model and download those drivers, or use Driverpacks to get a set of pre-uncompressed INI/INF drivers.

To inject drivers into a Windows image, you will need Windows AIK which includes the Deployment tools command prompt. You'll need to mount the image dism /mount-wim and then use the injection command dism /add-driver /r /driver:PathToDrivers

For the LAN (PXE boot) setup, you could look into setting up a Windows 200(3/8) deployment services.

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  • As far as I am aware sysprp no longer works on Vista and win7.
    – Hennes
    Jun 15, 2012 at 20:34
  • I do not want to use USB drive. I said Network in my question Jun 15, 2012 at 20:38
  • 3
    @hennes sysprep works just fine in Windows 7. Jun 15, 2012 at 20:39
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    @user791022 You will still need to make the image. After creating the image, then you can use the Windows Deployment services to PXE boot your workstations. Furthermore, you said I want to re install using network not specifying your initial install. Jun 15, 2012 at 20:40
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You may wan to take a look at the FOG project. It is an open source system imaging tool pretty much designed to do what you are trying to do.

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  • We use FOG where I work - works wonderfully AND the latest version supports imaging multi-boot platforms including Mac! The pre-requisite is a Linux server, PXE (with access to any VLAN/DHCP options) and the knowledge of creating an image (incl. sysprep)... make sure you have the Windows licensing agreements in place and make sure the machines you're imaging allow you to install the version of Windows your image contains...
    – Kinnectus
    Oct 9, 2015 at 14:10
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I can answer the last part of your question: PXE.

Press F12 to select from which device to start, en select PXE network boot. Obviously you need a server for this.

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See my question on the subject ( Creating Windows 7 images in Audit mode ) for making the images.

Once that is done, you can use the OEM Preinstallation DVD from Microsoft to turn your "base" computer into an imaging computer. It will let other computers boot via the network and automatically image across to the other systems

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You might want to try looking at MDT2012 (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd407791)

This creates a network share and copies a clean OS image onto it. From there you can add in drivers via the management interface and create a boot disk/image that you can use either via WDS/PXE or (as we tend to) stick it on a USB key and boot from that and start deployment.

You can do image capture of a machine you've set-up, or if you only need to do driver/patch, adding users and basic software installation you can this via the MDT task sequence and the unattended config.

If you have groups of machines that have conflicting drivers, or need to change what softare gets installed where this can also be done via the task sequence.

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This can be done with Serva.

Basically, it takes the files from a Microsoft Install CD/DVD and offers them as a network install. Serva automates the procedure; the only thing you have to do is to copy the files from the install CD/DVD and create a network share. It also allows to install several OSs automatically creating a install menu. (I'm related to Serva development.)

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