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Ghost installs and automation


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Hey guys I need a bit of help.

On a school campus I have computer images created in Ghost for differant types of systems (Dell optiplex 755, Gateway 4500d, etc)

Normally when I reimage a class environment of 20+ computers, this is what happens...

Mass deploy the image to 20 + workstations using ghost cast server

All computers then boot up with the same name.

log in as admin

Rename the computers one by one

Reboot

Log back in as admin

run newsid.exe

Reboot

Log in as admin

Join domain

Reboot

Log in as student user

Is there any way I can edit one of my ghost images so that I can automate most of this?

It sure would be nice to have a lot of auto renames, logins, and sid generations.

Any help is greatly apprieciated.

Edited by digerati
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question: any special reason to hack around with newsid.exe instead of using sysprep?

also, if you use sysprep/minisetup there should be an option to automatically choose different names for the PCs, not only the autogenerated ones. You have to build some sort of data source though, binding some hardware ID to a specific name. IIRC

Have to read the XP deployment docs again.

Weird, I dont know where I got the idea with autoassigning usernames. The deployment docs dont say anything about this, so it's autogenerated names or all the same or wait for user input.

Edited by bj-kaiser
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Hey guys I need a bit of help.

On a school campus I have computer images created in Ghost for differant types of systems (Dell optiplex 755, Gateway 4500d, etc)

Normally when I reimage a class environment of 20+ computers, this is what happens...

Mass deploy the image to 20 + workstations using ghost cast server

All computers then boot up with the same name.

log in as admin

Rename the computers one by one

Reboot

Log back in as admin

run newsid.exe

Reboot

Log in as admin

Join domain

Reboot

Log in as student user

Is there any way I can edit one of my ghost images so that I can automate most of this?

It sure would be nice to have a lot of auto renames, logins, and sid generations.

Any help is greatly apprieciated.

i had the same enquiry but i found solution in sysprep. sysprep is very good. for that i have to work for 1000 different machinces.

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question: any special reason to hack around with newsid.exe instead of using sysprep?

also, if you use sysprep/minisetup there should be an option to automatically choose different names for the PCs, not only the autogenerated ones. You have to build some sort of data source though, binding some hardware ID to a specific name. IIRC

Have to read the XP deployment docs again.

Weird, I dont know where I got the idea with autoassigning usernames. The deployment docs dont say anything about this, so it's autogenerated names or all the same or wait for user input.

Well we just have never used sysprep. We have many differant setups with apps and settings and we generally just make an image for a classroom and some for faculty exactly as it needs to be, and image that bad boy, lable it according to the system it is, and put it on the network. All using ghostcast server of course.

It nice how we can zap an image to an entire lab and all that needs to be done is rename, reboot, resid reboot, join domain, log on as teacher or student.

If only I could automate that further I could just sit back and watch or do other labs. It takes about 30 mins or longer to do all that after a fresh image rollout.

I thought sysprep would require me to reenter XP Keys, printers, etc.

Also we name our computers specifially by area-room-computerid

EX: J-M-205-7800 (Jackson-Main-room205-computerID)

Maybe I am missing something with sysprep???

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If you use sysprep you can supply an answer file that will fill in any or all of the normal first startup questions like xp serial and the like. Then you can skip the newsid step.

I have approached it in numerous different ways over the years. For our lab machines they are set to autologin 2-3 times depending upon the lab. The first boot a script runs which queries DNS for the FQDN by IP and then renames the machine according to these results and reboots. On the second login the same script runs verifies the name has change to the correct name and if it was successful joins it to the domain. The third reboot installs DeepFreeze.

I have also written some apps which perform steps similar to above for end user machines we ghost. Though they also does further image customization depending upon where the machine is going. (We lovingly call these apps PostGhost because it does everything after Ghosting is complete)

And in current development I have an app to replace the above which I haven't come up with a catchy name for yet. But the process boots from Windows PE media then asks a collection of questions, the image is applied to the machine (we will be using WIMs instead of Ghost), then the supplied answers are used to reconfigure the sysprep answer files. Same app will deploy both XP and Vista, and Win7 when released.

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