Windows XP Imaging Tip from Chip
If you are a Windows Network Administrator (like me) you probably are responsible for more than just the server farm. You are probably responsible for the client machines as well. And if you are like me you have a base set of programs that you install for every user; Office 2003, Firefox, SSH, and so on. And if you are like me (and the rest of the Network Administrator World) you have a base image that you use to roll out new machines to users (or old machines to new users).
And that works fine. As long as you have the same vendor for your computers, the same motherboard, same CPU, same RAM, etc etc etc. Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista aren't very nice when it comes to wholesale changes of hardware. Windows 98 played nice when you dropped your 98 image from your Dell Dimension onto a Gateway 2000. It chugged away for a while, sometimes asking for the Windows 98 Install CD. But when the machine rebooted Windows 98 was ready to go with your software set intact. Not XP. Not at all.
Here is a tip to help make your base image work across manufactures hardware. Go ahead and install the image and run it till it breaks (probably pretty quickly). Reboot with the Windows XP Installation CD and do a REPAIR INSTALL.
The nice thing about this is the Repair Install will rebuild the kernel just the way it needs to be for XP to play nicely with the hardware present and when you are all done with that the software packages installed will still be there. Granted it might take as much time to do the repair install and redownload all the XP patches to get the machine running. But if you have a lot of software packages installed or the customization for your environment is extensive this workaround for using your existing image on new hardware is worth its weight in gold.
Filed under: Desktops, Computer, Software, Network Computer, Hack, Windows
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