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Pete LongFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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Sysprep 2.0 and windows XP

Hello All :0)

Right Ive done this hundreds of times with W2K but XP is not playing at all :0)

heres the scenario

I work for a national org that has an open client agreement with Microsoft, if we want to install windows we can, no worries we have an agreement it is free to us.

Ive got to roll out a lot of DELL GX270's. I've built and configured my master PC, got the latest sysprep and run setupmgr etc, ran sysprep system shuts down all tickety boo

now after ghosting the image to the target PC's at every boot up comes the NEW ANNOYING sysprep menu, Ive got the option to reset to factory settings, audit or reseal - no matter what I do the freaking machines come back up with the annoying you have 30 days to register malarky! - now normally id just click register online and all would be well, but in this case i cant (its not my network and i cant configure the proxy to let it work) and I dont fancy 300 phone calls to microsoft to activate the clients.

I THINK I've got this problem because I built the original machine from the Dell setup disks (cause Im a lazy sod) If I build the master from a VOLUME LICENCED copy of XP will this solve the problem - just to save me all the time installing and testing the thing!!

Cant find any good info at M$ (I have technet)

One of you guys must have done this on XP as much as I have done it on 2K so this could be some easy points.

Pete
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righty ho

To summarise

1. I need to use my volume licenced copy of Windows XP
2. I need to edit the sysprep.inf file and enter the following

[UserData]
ProductKey= "XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX"

Just to confirm - if I do this Then download sysprep 2.0 (as opposed to the one in the deploy cab on the CD)
Then I wont see the sysprep menu on EVERY boot and wont have to hit factory,Audit or Reseal, nor will I have to tick any of the option box's below?

I just dont want to spend hours creating the thing and end up back at square one, throwing crimping tools around the server room and swearing.

Pete
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Thanks to you all, Image is rebuilt and Im in the process of ghosting it BEFORE its sysprepped in case it stuffs up, then I can pull it back and keep on syspreping it till I get it to work OK.

All being well, Ill repost later on tonight - to let you all know how it worked out, and if all is well I'll split the points up.

regards

Pete
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oBdA

Keeping two different images ("ghosting it BEFORE its sysprepped") is always a good idea. One "master" image to make changes to if necessary, plus a sysprepped one for deploying. I don't really trust Sysprep enough to deploy images that have been sysprepped several times ...
Right, All is sweet with the world

just in case anyone searches this PAQ

I used the sysprep from the CD, loaded the volume licence disk, sysprepped away and all is well, didnt bother with the pnp as Ive got over 100 identical machines, sat in boxes in everyone's offices so Im not expecting any HAL problems.

I concur on the mini setup - tick the box to turn it off!

And tick the Pre-Activated button (if you cant see this button youve made the same mistake I made originally :0)

Thanks everyone

Pete
Thanks, just wished I could have helped more, but I did see early that you had most of it under control already. Thanks also for the explanation of what result was, that is all too often lacking. I've just one request, and that is to let us know how it goes for the hundred or so in total. One expects a certain failure rate, but how low and why. There are remaining superstitions, for example, that the equipment will be discovered to be unidentical, for better or worse. Are you networking this or mailing CDs. Whatever, the question is for actual result, not the current plan, for it concerns the success/failure rate.  On that,,

                                                                       -[Good Fortune]-
Glad i could provide with some useful info. In the past year i've had many(perhaps too much) to deal with images, sysprepping and ghosting many workstations and servers os's for multiple platforms, and the thing to keep in mind when making those is always to work
very orderly, very cautiously, be as minimalistic as possible - and above all else- "save" your work often :)
Making numerous checkpoints along the way often saved me from much wasted time. the only problem you did, as far as i can see, is to install from the wrong cd - but hey- that's the breaks :)

Another suggestion - keep a firm documentation of all the image contents and add custom reg keys to idenitfy the images along the
way later on. It doesn't cost a time and might come in very handy.

Have a great weekend,
      Deus
Thanks guys if I hit any bumps on the road, Ill repost to increase the PAQ value, roll out will not start till next Wed

Pete
Its all going swimmingly, about 50 clients now deployed and no problems so far.

Pete
I'd like to add one note.  Reloading a machine from scratch is not required.  You can actually upgrade to a Volume Licensing (VL) version by running winnt32 from the current OS and selecting upgrade.  I've done this on several machines that each had custom apps and configurations and had no problems.  I did reapply our security templates just to be on the safe side but I believe it doesn't change anything but the installation type to VL.
tazmansoto thanks for the follow up :)