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I have to regularly install Windows 10 OEM on machines.

Is there a way that is faster than installing it from a USB key? I remember in the old days of simple OS, you could just do a raw byte by byte clone of a hard disk image and it would just boot up fine.

However nowadays with all the security and licensing stuff, when I tried doing that, windows wouldn't boot and I would spend more time fixing things that if I just did a clean install.

How do people in large companies install windows on multiple machines?

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  • Our corporate team has a Windows volume license key that allows us to install the operating system, customize it, and then run Sysprep to capture our "master image." After that, we clone the hard drives and deploy them on physical machines. It usually take less than 15 minutes from the time we power-on the computer to when it's ready to join the domain.
    – Run5k
    Jan 20, 2017 at 4:30
  • "Is there a way that is faster than installing it from a USB key?" - Network Installation (i.e. PXE). If you have a fast enough network with a SSD you can apply a .wim within minutes. Since your just apply data to the SSD instead of "transferring, extracting, and then eventually getting to the actual installation phase" of the traditional WinPE
    – Ramhound
    Jan 21, 2017 at 2:51

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Modern installations are pretty streamlined - they actually restore from a wim (or possibly VHD) image.

How do people in large companies install windows on multiple machines?

They use volume keys with a sysprepped, standard image per model. For semi bespoke installations you can use some combination of an answer file, dism for offline work on an image and sysprep for creating a general image. That said, imaging and restoring a 'stock' image is rarely faster than a full, fresh installation - I just end up handling the post install process as automatically as I can - silent installs can be scripted for your common applications, and for one offs ninite or chocolatey might work well.

Really large places use sccm or similar applications for deployment, but that's essentially a application on a server that does many of these things for you, as well as manage installations.

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