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I am part of a robotics team and as a gift/sponsorship, we recently received a bunch of old laptops from a local business. They're all thinkpads. I've reinstalled windows and after hours of downloading lenovo drivers for everything, from usb to screen, I've finally got one to work perfectly, all needed software and drivers installed. The problem is that I would not like to repeat this long process for all the other 4 laptops.

Questions I have:

-How would I do this (creating a disk image or cloning)? -They've all got windows keys. Would cloning or imaging cause problems with windows? -The software on them also has keys how would the copied computers handle this (would I need to reenter the keys)?

Thanks, Dragongeek

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    Search this site (or google) for cloning, multicasting and sysprep.
    – Hennes
    Sep 26, 2014 at 21:12
  • are they all the same model? Does any of them have the restoration partion intact? That's probably the easiest way to get them to a common baseline.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Oct 4, 2014 at 2:35

3 Answers 3

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I can think of two possible solutions off the top of my head, I'll cover each from a high level and let you figure out the details.

  1. Clone the HDD. Using a tool like dd you can clone the entire drive, this will copy all settings, programs, and files over. You'll then have to update the Windows Key manually on each machine, but that's it. If you want to clone multiple HDDs at once on Linux, you might look into a command similar to the one below:

for n in /dev/sd{b..f}; do dd if=/dev/sda of="$n" bs=10M & done

  1. Use Sysprep. Sysprep is a Microsoft supported tool for capturing system images and deploying them around to other machines. You can find extensive documentation on it on TechNet or just around the web.

If you want more information, let me know or ask a different specific question on SuperUser.

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  • Sysprep is a fantastic tool, although if you're only doing one run the time taken to learn it will probably be comparable to cloning the HDD onto each machine, and cloning has less chance of you messing it up.
    – Jon Story
    Sep 26, 2014 at 22:38
  • Sysprep, technically, provides a method of "generalising" a Windows install so that you can deploy it to multiple workstations (including different hardware) - its main role is to remove unique data that each install should have as duplication causes problems (mainly in a domain). It is far simpler for you to prepare one of the laptops -> sysprep /generalise -> shutdown Windows -> clone. Please read any of the multitude of tutorials on how to sysprep and deploy Windows...
    – Kinnectus
    Sep 26, 2014 at 22:38
  • Big Chris. In this case Dragongeek may not need to use the generalize option if all his machines are similar enough. He doesn't specifically mention they are identical, but I've found Thinkpad drivers often work across different models (but not necessarily different generations).
    – tbenz9
    Sep 26, 2014 at 23:33
  • @tbenz9 Yeah, they are all identical laptops. The only thing different is the wear on the keys.
    – Dragongeek
    Sep 27, 2014 at 2:37
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I concur that there are these two options. A few notes:

  • Some software doesn’t play nice with Sysprep, notably antivirus and security software which protects the files which Sysprep attempts to alter during generalization.
  • Sysprep and generalization is required to make each system unique. In addition to the product key, it also resets security identifiers which are required for some network software, like WSUS.
  • You might want to consider the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT). The process you would currently be looking at would be something like:
    1. Install MDT on a client or server.
    2. Create a deployment share.
    3. Create a Sysprep and capture task sequence.
    4. Generate boot media.
    5. Boot on the client system and capture the image.
    6. Create a deployment task sequence.
    7. Boot to the boot media on the destination systems.
    8. Launch the deployment task sequence.
    9. Supply computer names/product keys.
  • Note that with MDT you can deploy over the network, even boot without physical media with PXE boot via WDS. You can also separate applications and drivers from the image to provide granularity where one image will apply to multiple models or scenarios.
  • MDT is free, and can be downloaded from the provided link.
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You can use MDT for your job or you can alternatively use a simpler approach using Serva (I'm related to Serva development)

This alternative that does not require:

  1. cloning
  2. imagining
  3. identical hardware

Just get a Windows Vista and up install ISO and get it ready for deployment with Serva (Automated PXE server) see here how:

http://vercot.com/~serva/an/WindowsPXE1.html

This basically implies copying the content of your install ISO to Serva's PC.

Next you can inject "all" the required drivers (not just only the network drivers) by copying the driver components as it is explained in the previous link.

Next you just PXE boot your clients and then you can net install Windows normally.

Additionally you could inject custom software to the install default image Image.wim. i.e. if you want to install Firefox, then using dism.exe just add the Firefox install to Install.wim. Let's say you installed it at \FF\FireFoxInstall.exe, then when you finish an OS install you'll see that the target gets copied C:\FF\FireFoxInstall.exe, just run the FireFoxInstall.exe in the client and you are done. You can also do this unattended if you create unattend.xml

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