How to make a multi harware ghost image ?

[giz059]

Hello everybody,

I have to make a ghost image of a w2000 installation which must be able to be load to very different machine.

For exemple i put a w2000 on a P4 using chipset i915 and SATA disk. I make a ghost image of this installation.

And i would like this image to work on a laptop with a i830 chipset and ide Disk for example ??

How can i make my ghost image independant from the harware ??

Thank's a lot !!

[trickytwista]

you would be wise to post same question once, and NOT 3 times in 3 different sections http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=18408 EDIT: now 4 sections

Edited February 3, 2006 by trickytwista

[giz059]

sorry for that.

I only want this topic to be seen by as many people as possible because i need an urgent answer.

[vpn-user]

You will have to use sysprep and the massstorage section of sysprep.inf as well as integrating all drivers that are needed. But hold your breath, using sysprep is not that easy and reading documentation and testing needs a lot of time. Start with downloading the Windows OPK and reading included documentation.

Also consider that Windows will be in factory mode when using sysprep, so it' s not just preparing the image as you like and then ghost it. Deploying a sysprepped ghost image still needs a lot of "sysprep action" when booting for the first time. You know, the system has to determine which drivers are really needed and so on.

Edited February 3, 2006 by vpn-user

[Hillbillie]

Here is what I do at my shop. I load all the drivers on the computer and get it working. Just load the bare essencial drivers you need. Then I clone the HD and save it on my network. When I get another computer that needs the same operating system, I put the clone image on this computer too. Then I install all the drivers and re-save the clone image. Now my image has 2 different computer drivers on it. (Remember to change your product key to match the COA on the 2nd computer.

I keep repeating this process. The more you repeat this process, the more drivers your image has.

I dont use this process for Windows XP, because of the Bâshrat the Sneaky's DriverPacks has almost all we need except for the Modems.

This works well for Windows 98, ME etc.

BTW, I like Acronis Server Edition better. It has a good network interface. Acronis 9.0 regular works good too.

Hope this helps.