Small Vista rollout from image

[bubbajoey]

Apologies to those that have seen this question asked before.....Lord knows I have spent the past 2 days trying to find an answer, now verging on a breakdown.

I'm running a project to deploy Vista Business to 20 late model Dell PCs (with the potential to grow to 100). The PCs will be used in a public library for all to use with Office 2007 and other bits of software. There is no security requirements, the request is that users should get the same experience as they would if they were using it at home. Included in the build would be Faronics DeepFreeze control software that "freezes" the build so that any changes made during the use of the PC will be removed on restart.

I have created the Master system and now need to image it using imagex, then dump image to a DVD so that it can be used to deploy to all other PCs.

The issue I have is that I have read that I need to sysprep before imaging. I have done this and discovered that it changes my master build, drivers don't get installed, icons on desktop go missing etc. NOT GOOD !

My question is, why do I need to sysprep, can't I just clone the disk as is and be done with it? By not sysprepping, will it cause any issues?

I have imaged using imagex and successfully deployed to a test unit and all works, just need to know if I will run into any issues down the track.

Thanks

BubbaJoey

[cluberti]

All machines on the network built from a master image without sysprep will have the same SID and machine name, amongst other things. On a Windows network, this is basically a no-no and can cause issues with IP addressing, windows updates, and network browsing. If you're having issues with your image after sysprep'ing it, consider looking into BDD 2007 for assistance in creating an image that will work post-sysprep.

[bubbajoey]

Thanks for the repsonse. I have found a work around by using NewSID.