Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Looking for advice on cloning XP systems

This is topic Looking for advice on cloning XP systems in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 03-22-2004, 05:57 PM:

I'm going to be setting up 11 identical high-end graphics systems using XP Pro. I've never tried cloning XP. Anyone have any tips on doing this, particularly given the XP activation issue and the unique 96-bit system identifier that each system has. I haven't done much research yet but I figure someone here has probably done this. A quick look at the MS Knowledge Base shows they want you to use their SysPrep Tool to do this. Ewww!!! [Wink]

Any advice will be appreciated.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 03-22-2004, 06:07 PM:

Yeah, you have to use sysprep. That means that all of the user information and a bunch of other crap has to be entered into XP the first time it boots. [Mad]

I was going to do this to upsize my hard drive, but found out in the middle of everything that I was going to lose my user info on both the new AND original drives. [Mad]

Luckily, I backed up my user directories to another drive on the network and still had my data files. So I ended up just doing a fresh install and used the import-settings-and-files-from-another-computer wizard. [Mad]

XP Pro does not require you to "activate" through Microsoft, however.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 03-22-2004, 06:26 PM:

There is a way to set up a "standard build" CD that installs XP, and every setting you wish preconfigured a certain way. I created one for my company, and basically, all you have to do is insert the CD, power on, press any key, and come back in a half an hour to a fully configured PC. But the documentation to do that correctly is scattered all over the place, and if you're only setting up 11 PCs, it's probably not worth the trouble to do that.

If they need to be trully identical, I'd suggest starting with one PC, and creating a check list of everything you do to set it up. Then once the checklist is complete, wipe that drive and do it again, this time following the check list. Keep doing that until you polish off the checklist, and you're sure its right, then build the rest of the PCs off that checklist.

Posted by Ron Lacheur (Member # 1126) on 03-22-2004, 06:36 PM:

I assume this is all for XP Pro Corporate Edition and not for any of the Retail or OEM versions?

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 03-22-2004, 06:45 PM:

Yeah I probably should have mentioned that. I can't speak for others, but in my case, anyway, I'm talking about the XP Pro Corporate/Enterprise edition CD.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 03-22-2004, 06:46 PM:

Use ZENworks! You know you want to. ZEN is fun.

Otherwise, sysprep and Ghost are your friend. Actually for real fun, use all three.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 03-22-2004, 07:13 PM:

This is probably going to be the retail version of XP Pro (don't know for sure yet, and I have no control over what they buy).

Turns out someone here has a copy of Ghost 2003, so I'll be exploring that option. Some of the MS tech notes actually recommend using 3rd-party s/w [e.g. Ghost] for cloning XP...

Thanks for the advice.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 03-22-2004, 09:22 PM:

My first try at cloning to the larger drive was with PowerQuest Drive Image. Didn't work.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 03-22-2004, 10:20 PM:

Actually, Daryl, we use Zenworks, and you're right. It is the way to go.

We install the PC from the CD, and when the users login to NDS, Zen creates a local account for them and logs them into the PC. Novell Rules! Now if we can only get them to create some server side APIs for GroupWise, so I can tie my webapps to it I'd be in heaven.

Ghost is great if you have exactly identical PCs, which we don't. But our CD works on all of them.

Posted by William T. Parr (Member # 677) on 03-22-2004, 10:23 PM:

Dave You will want to set up one P/C completely the rest set up all the way down to the Applications that will be common across all of them, then run the Ghost utility and ghost the image onto a slaved Hard Drive. Word of caution though, the Ghost Image will only work in a FAT partition so do not try to save it in a NTFS partition.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 03-22-2004, 10:56 PM:

FAT Bah! http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm

Besides, Ghost broadcasting is more fun anyway.

Posted by William T. Parr (Member # 677) on 03-23-2004, 12:08 AM:

Nifty tool there Daryl. That is another Idea Dave. Do a Ghost Multicast session.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 03-23-2004, 06:29 PM:

Received the first 3 systems today. They have XP Pro, retail edition.

Adam said:

quote:
XP Pro does not require you to "activate" through Microsoft, however.

We customarily buy Dell PCs with XP Pro. The machines come with a Dell-logo XP SP1a CD, which can be used to do a nuke and pave type install (they are not the dreaded image CDs that other manufacturers supply which are the devil's spawn ARE YOU LISTENING HP AND SONY??!!!) If the OS is reinstalled from that Dell CD, it never asks me for the product key, and it doesn't require activation. [Cool]

But the retail version of XP seems to require both the product key and activation. [Frown]

Still devising the best way to do the cloning. Now I'm being told all the systems will not necessarily be identical either. [Mad]

Anyway I appreciate everyone's advice.

Posted by Brad Allen (Member # 470) on 03-23-2004, 06:36 PM:

I put my vote in for Ghost.
I use it as a backup method, and knock on wood, hasn't failed me yet. But it has saved my butt a couple of times when HD's crap out.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 03-23-2004, 06:53 PM:

If it's only a difference of video cards, etc. and not main boards, you could install the drivers for all cards on one machine, then run sysprep, then clone the drives via your preferred automagical method.

BTW, my current favourite method of cloning IDE drives is to mirror them with a Promise TX 2000 IDE RAID card (very inexpensive). Not only is it fast, it's resumable. Absolutely awesome for recovering data from failing drives.

I'd steer away from PowerQuest's software for mirroring drives. It's good for resizing partitions, but it's certainly not the leader in cloning.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-23-2004, 08:07 PM:

I have friends who use Ghost as a safety net for ventures into "irresponsible computing" such as logging into KaZaa Lite. I suppose that would be fine as long as you don't forget to do routine, scheduled backups of your boot disc image.

Considering how bad the malware and spyware problem is getting, it doesn't seem like firewalls, anti-viral DATs and spyware killing apps are enough. Ghosting to an extra hard disc or two (and then perhaps unplugging them and storing them in a safe place) seems a little more dependable.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 03-23-2004, 08:48 PM:

For stuff like that (malware and idiot end users alike) Deep Freeze is the system administrators' absolute best friend. You'll send the folks at Faronics a Christmas card before your own mother.

I use Deep Freeze in a few corporate environments (and schools and school boards that I used to administer). It kicks much ass.

The user can mess the system up as much as they want, including formatting the hard drive. A simple reboot brings everything back to the way it was when the system was last frozen. The only changes remaining are changes made in definable non-frozen user directories.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 03-23-2004, 11:25 PM:

Daryl,

Have you ever tried Zenworks' imaging features? We have so many different kinds of PCs it doesn't make sense for us to try and use it, but I'm wondering how much luck others have had with it.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 03-24-2004, 12:08 AM:

ZENworks imaging works pretty good. I've pretty much stuck with Ghost though, just for the sake of a uniform solution since I've been using Ghost since it was owned by Ghost Software. If Symantec butchers it much more though I may use ZENworks imaging more in the future.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 10-10-2004, 09:40 PM:

Well here's an update on this (better late than never). Today I successfully Ghosted my personal drive (XP Pro). Went from a 160GB ATA/100 to a 120GB SATA/150. The only real problem I ran into was the cloned drive would start to boot but wouldn't get past the Windows welcome screen (where the login should appear, only it didn't). Did some googling, found lots of recommendations to use Partition Magic, which I don't have and don't really want to buy just for this. Then I found a MS Tech Note suggesting to boot to DOS and run FDISK /MBR. That worked.

SATA/150 kickes ATA/100's ass by the way. [thumbsup]