TBH my methodology, was not as convoluted as the original posters... I re-installed from the Dell OEM cd, updated OS patches and drivers and required applications, making an image before running sysprep (OS fully working for quick restore) and ran sysprep, after to create the deployment image. Also as i am just in the testing phase to discover feasibility, i never actually copied my image over to another machine as i hoped that letting it just go through the motions again, starting up would simulate the effect of having copied the image to a similiar machine. Anyway the errors i recieved were on first boot OS failed to run due to a registry key not changed properly telling XP that the install hadn't finished properly, then after havingh sorted that out, rebooting again to discover about only 5 services were running and my machine was severly crippled. If i'm wsting my time trying to sysprep a dell OEM then fair enough, but i could kiss someone, or not, who could give me succsessful step by steps as to how to do it. Would it be fair to say that people who are succssessfully sysprepping are starting with either a volume licence product, or other such unadulterated media? The other way i'm looking at it is as we've a lot of very similiar machines, i'm tempted to just clone the image then run something like the SID re-generator from the likes of sysinternals as hardware would be p[retty much identical everywhere anyway, shame though as i'm trying to do this as part of my MCSA course... Thanks for any enlightenment anyone - greatly appreciated! Squeak
