In the last 5 posts we installed Ubuntu, and Clonezilla to massively clone multiple computers through the network. if you landed to this page from a search engine, please take a look at the previous posts.
- Windows 7 Network Installation
- Installing Ubuntu Server 10.10
One critical thing that needs to be done before the original computer gets imaged is remove all the things that identify a computer in a network like SSIDs, computer name, etc. to do that, you need to use the built-in tool on Windows 7 called System Preparation Tool . on Windows 7 that tool can be found at this path “C:WindowsSystem32sysprep”
SysPrep on Windows 7 is much simpler than on Windows XP. Upon executing the tool, you are prompted to choose from two options: Enter System Out-of-The-Box (OOBE) and Enter System Audit Mode.
the first option will set windows 7 to prompt the user for all attributes like Computer Name, Username, and Password etc. the second option will execute Windows 7 in audit mode. when you image a computer in either these two options windows 7 can only be installed on the same type of hardware of the original imaged computer. but SysPrep on windows 7 includes an option to generalize the installation, which mean the image can be installed on any hardware:
I haven’t play with SysPrep on windows 7 that much, only what I have written here, but SysPrep supports much more than this including an answer file.
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