_jd_

Any means of restoring or otherwise reverting the contents of C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers back to defaults (XP SP1)? I have five makes/models of machines that use ADI/SoundMAX audio but require different versions of the driver for each. The master sysprep image already has a fairly recent copy of smwdm.sys in the above folder and a conflict arises when mini-setup tries to install an older version of the ADI/SoundMAX drivers (same file names/different versions). So, i'm looking for a way to clear the above path of any third-party files. I suppose I could rebuild the master image from the machine that uses the older driver, but that doesn't seem to be a clean solution. Not to mention, after resolving the audio conflicts, similiar conflicts could still arise. Thanks.

Yeah, i'm going to looking into using PE this weekend. It appears to be the most straight forward method of preping the drive for an installation. Thanks.

I've already built and customized an unattended install CD (XP SP1) but originally left the partitioning to be done manually. The need has recently surfaced to automate this task but i'm not sure to where to look for the solution. The partitioning scheme is somewhat complex so letting setup format the entire drive as NTFS, so I need to script the partitioning/formatting prior to setup launching. I'd also like the mechanism to reside on the same disc as the unattended install. Thoughts??? I've browsed the forums and have come up empty handed so far...

Being that you have the same hardware accross the board you should be able to get by with three images as you suggested, tho you'll still probably get new hardware detected on the first reboot after cloning. As for deploying images, I implemented Ghost Solution Suite 1.0 (Ghost 8.x) a few months ago and it has performed well (and yes, the Corporate/Enterprises releases of Ghost can reset SID's... sysprep is not required for this). Solution Suite also allows you to clone workstations remotely through the use of a win32 client - no need to visit each workstation. As for sysprep, it really shines in it's ability to migrate an install accross various hardware configs. This isn't so much of an issue in your case, but it would provide your users will a cleaner first login after cloning. I use sysprep in my images as i've got 6 "standard" workstation models to maintain (P4 i845/ i865/i915 machines w/ various hardware differences). One sysprep image goes accross all.