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YashyFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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Does Microsoft MDT tool take image of everything on the PC?

Hi guys,

I wanted to know something about the Microsoft MDT tool. If you have a PC, full of applications like Microsoft Office (volume licensed) and various other apps and then I wanted to take an image of that actual PC so that I could deploy it out to new PC's we have bought, then does it do that?

Everywhere I keep reading about it, there is a mention of creating a boot image etc and deployment that, but nowhere does it mention actually cloning the PC and its contents and deploying it using MDT?

Any guides or step by steps that do indicate this?

Thanks
Yashy
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Nagendra Pratap Singh
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Hello
The MDT don't clone your PC. You should prepare your PC by running sysprep before capture it. So the image captured will be one without SSID (without name if you want). for cloning one pc you can use ghost, but for deploing is better MDT, because you may need identic PC with different SSID.

Dan
MDT does clone your PC. It is a part of the task sequence.

MDT TS has steps like sysprep and create image. Of course it needs software like WDS,WAIK and sysprep for this.

As for ghost, it had ghostwalker which came way before sysprep. It changes SID and not SSID.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2009/10/06/how-to-run-a-sysprep-and-capture-task-sequence-from-mdt-2010.aspx
you have to create a capture task sequence. Please not that imaging rights only applies to VL media and not OEM media.  You will need a Microsoft Volume Licensing agreement to be legal.  It will work without the agreement but you will be out of compliance
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But all of the PCs we have bought have a genuine sticker on them. Still mean we are out of compliance?
no you don't have imaging rights.

Reimaging is the copying of software onto multiple devices from one standard image. Reimaging rights are granted to all Microsoft Volume Licensing customers. Under these rights, customers can reimage original equipment manufacturer (OEM) or full-package product (FPP) licensed copies using media provided under their Volume Licensing agreement. However, certain conditions exist for using the Volume Licensing media for reimaging software that is previously installed either by the OEM or from FPP.

Microsoft Volume Licensing Brief - Reimaging Licensed Microsoft Software by Using Volume Licensing Media - http://goo.gl/9qdV0T
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Thanks a lot for your advice here, i appreciate it.

I'm curious though, if the PC's are all identical then how would any audit process find out? Would the product keys come back as being the same using tools like MAP or Snow auditing software?
imaging can be done with OEM or MVL. I'ts important to use the key that you have on your pc and not one for all pc (that's the avantage of MVL).

So the image should be captured with a nonactivated software, and you should not put any key in sysprep file.

Dan

Forget the link http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5114
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hey man,

Sorry for the late response, been researching this after your posts.

i've been reading this link: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/165472-product-key-number-uninstall-deactivate-windows.html

I went ahead and deactivated Windows after the comments, so that I could have it in a deactivated state and do the imaging. Now the question is this: What on earth product key will I enter to reactivate it? The one on the sticker?

Thanks
Yashy
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Sysprep is mandated and this will unactivate the machine and make it ready for imaging you then will use your Volume License product key.
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Dan, are you referring to the key as the one which is on the sticker product key that is on the PC?