Imaging and Deployment Via 2003

[WhoahThatsCool]

Well Let me first define what i want to do:

*Create an image of my Installed licensed OS (on my netbook), with all my drivers and programs installed installed

*I want to be able to 'install' that image on my netbook via my Windows 2003 Server

*Before that image is installed-i want to be able to format my hard drivers then re-partion them

*i want to be able to to this using free software

*Apart from manual booting into PXE i would like, after that, not to have to overseen the installation of the image or anything else if possible

*I'll only be using this image on my netbook...but if you want to help with the creation of a 'universal' install image with necessary drivers and what not that would be great.

Now with this level of avanced installation i'm a noob. But i have managed to install XP via RIS onto my netbook using an answer file....which is much much faster though there a few things i still have to click through at the end (i haven't managed to enabled repartitioning using the answer file however)

I've seen countless example of how to do this on the web but it's all pretty much flown over my head, so i was wondering if soemone could help with specifically what i want to achieve.....maybe helping to compile a definite step by step guide with 'what' 'why' and 'how'??

I only know the basics of what needs to be done but from that i'm lost.

[Mordac85]

There's more than one way to accomplish this. You could use something like Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT, formerly BDD) and create a Lite-Touch or Zero Touch Install or you could just create a PXE boot image (like WinPE) and script diskpart to handle drive partitioning and imagex to drop a WIM image on your box.

Either way, there's a lot of work in setting up either in your environment so it depends on which way you want to go. Read up on MDT and figure out which way would be best for you.

[cluberti]

I prefer MDT to the old RIS-style installs if you're going to do "flat" builds, but MDT can't deploy an XP or 2003 WIM image file if you do decide to "image" an existing XP install. Your best bet, if you have a 2003 server with WDS, is to consider building the XP machine the way you want, sysprep'ing it, and capturing it (via a WDS Capture Image) to the WDS server. Mordac85 is right though, all of your options are going to require a good deal of work and some knowledge of Microsoft deployment technologies (whichever route you end up choosing - RIS build, MDT, WDS/capture, etc).