winpe 2.0 and imageX beginner

[roguecoolman]

hello,

I've been reading up on imageX and winpe 2.0 and it seems that many people are making it work for their environment. Currently we are using ghost to image out our lab machines running windows xp sp2. They all run indentical hardware.

However, if i can shave off the cost of owning ghost that would be great.

I have a few questions after reading many articles on the above. I'm hoping someone can verify i'm on understanding this right.

If i wanted to capture and deploy from a master build machine I can first:

(i'm imaging windows xp sp2, not vista yet).

1. Setup the computer with windows xp sp2, patches, drivers, software etc.

2. Once the master computer is deemed working order, I can run sysprep (I have batch scripts that run after sysprep to do some post installation work). I shut the computer off.

3. following some instructions like:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista...3.mspx?mfr=true

and

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=83722&st=0

I can build the winPE bootable cd. Then proceed to the master computer and boot from winpe

4. then once winpe runs, i can map a network share. run imageX and capture the image of the master machine to a network share.

5. then boot winpe CD on a target machine, map the network share, run the imageX to deploy the image over to the blank target machine.

after it finishes, it should restart and run sysprep startup (like it would after being ghosted).

is this generally the procedure?

I've read that you may have to use diskpart to prep the hard drive before image deployment? I've never had to do this with ghost. Merely put in the ghost boot disk, then copy over the image. If i had to format every hard drive, this would prolong my deployment time. Is this true?

is there anyway, I can distribute this image without having to hop on every machine with a winpe CD? like using pxe and pushing it down?

Thanks everyone. This forum has a wealth of information, thank you for sharing.

[bj-kaiser]

Booting PE 2.0 from a third-party server over PXE is possible. I use PXElinux as network boot loader, to load some utility disks and PE 2.0. So far I have only experimented with it, no real usage. If I understand it right, imagex saves only the file structure, not the partition setup. But you can use a DISKPART script before applying the image, so you can do everything with a batch or another script.

So far my theory.

[ubernerd]

Hop over to the WinPE part of this forum and you'll find lots of people doing exactly the same as yourself.

Yes you can push WinPE out using PXE (either by MS or other PXE servers, Linux is also confirmed to work)

Partitioning and formatting can be done using diskpart (builtin winpe tool) and no it will not prolong your installation process as it can partition and format a disk within seconds.

[roguecoolman]

thank you for the direction.