The Best Solution For Mass Reinstalling

[jameslee]

I do a lot of reinstalling for friends and family, just because i can't stand to hear people complaining about computers. Most of the time they think the problem is because Windows is a bad product, or they believe there's a physical problem with their hardware. More often than not after looking at their computer the problem is simply that their computer isn't correctly configured, or that it was never properly setup.

Since i work on individual computers, i rarely work on two computers with the same configuration. A lot of computers are direct OEMs from Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, etc. -- mostly integrated parts, never upgraded. Some systems are custom jobs, and others are just Frankensteined from leftover parts. Despite the difference in hardware, i generally setup the computers the same way. Windows, Office, Norton, Winzip, Acrobat, and all the other common applications and utilities.

My current solution for reinstalling these computers is to manually install and configure each system. As you can imagine, this process is very monotonous and time consuming. I'm always looking for a better solution, but have yet to find one. I've tried making a master installaion and ghosting/imaging it to other computers, but have had problems when the hardware of the slave computer differs too much from that of the master.

Has anyone had the same problem, and if so have you found a better solution? Does anyone know how the OEMs make the images they install on their various different systems? I would think that they don't create an image from scratch for every single different hard configuration they offer, but i could be wrong.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated, as i've been racking my brain on this for some time now.
James

[smurphy]

I have been doing this for a while as well. I have been using Drive Image and Norton Ghost. Once the system is done I take an image of it and store it on a CD. When they come back you go no problem and it is back up and running in 15mins. Course you still need to make that initial install and hope the hardware is good.

Cheers,
Scott

[Johnnymac]

Originally posted by smurphy
I have been doing this for a while as well. I have been using Drive Image and Norton Ghost. Once the system is done I take an image of it and store it on a CD. When they come back you go no problem and it is back up and running in 15mins. Course you still need to make that initial install and hope the hardware is good.

Cheers,
Scott

Agreed Ghost works well.

[jameslee]

Don't get me wrong, i love Ghost and use it all the time to backup my system. I've found that it works very well for restoring the same system or imaging to similar systems, but as i mentioned above the computers i work with vary greatly with respect to hardware and i haven't been able to get ghost to help in these situations.

[topane]

You can install Windows using an answer file. It's basically a text file with switches telling setup what to install or not install. If you're always using the same options to set up Windows, you could use one of these so you don't have to babysit the setup process. Other applications can be set up using answer files or command-line switches as well, minimizing your interaction.

[GilbertsGrape]

Originally posted by topane
You can install Windows using an answer file. It's basically a text file with switches telling setup what to install or not install. If you're always using the same options to set up Windows, you could use one of these so you don't have to babysit the setup process. Other applications can be set up using answer files or command-line switches as well, minimizing your interaction.

details, details, details. Please


Grape

[jameslee]

Here's a link to some information specific to the answer file. It doesn't mention to location of the file, but i assume it's on the setup disc.

Possible jackpot! (at least for the Windows portion of the reinstallation.)

Here's a link to the middle of an article describing the benefits of an unattended install including sections concerning Remote Installation Services (RIS) mentioned by topane in my other post.

Unfortunately, installing Windows is one of the shortest parts of the entire reinstallation process -- configuring it and tweaking it takes much longer, as does installing and configuring the individual programs like Office and WinZip. Perhaps RIS can deploy a fully configured/tweaked image of Windows? I'll read the article in full this afternoon and post my findings.