CREATE AN ANSWER FILE BY USING WINDOWS SETUP MANAGERIN THIS EXERCISE,...

3-19Lesson 2 Using Disk Duplication to Deploy Windows XP Professional

Mini Setup Wizard prompts the user for user- and computer-specific information, such

as the following:

■

End-User License Agreement (EULA)

■

Regional options

■

User name and company

■

Product key

■

Computer name and administrator password

■

Time zone selection

Note When you create a disk image, all the hardware settings of the reference computer

become part of the image. Thus, the reference computer should have the same (or similar)

hardware configuration as the destination computers. If the destination computers contain

Plug and Play devices that are not present in the reference computer, they are automatically

detected and configured at the first startup following installation. The user must install any

non–Plug and Play devices manually.

To install Windows XP Professional using disk duplication, you first need to install and

configure Windows XP Professional on a test computer. You then need to install and

configure any applications and software updates on the test computer.

How to Extract the Windows System Preparation Tool

Before you can use the Windows System Preparation Tool, you must copy the neces-

sary files onto the computer you are using to create the master image. To copy the

System Preparation Tool, you must extract the files from \Support\Tools\Deploy.cab

on the Windows XP Professional CD-ROM. For the steps to do this, see Lesson 1,

“Creating Unattended Installations by Using Windows Setup Manager.”

Preparing a Computer for the Creation of a Master Image

by Using the System Preparation Tool

The System Preparation Tool was developed to eliminate problems encountered in

disk copying. First of all, every computer must have a unique security identifier

(SID). If you copied an existing disk image to other computers, every computer on

which the image was copied would have the same SID. To prevent this problem, the

System Preparation Tool adds a system service to the master image that creates a

unique local domain SID the first time the computer to which the master image is

copied is started.

The hard drive controller device driver and the hardware abstraction layer (HAL)

on the computer on which the disk image was generated and on the computer to

which the disk image was copied must be identical. The other peripherals, such as the

network adapter, the video adapter, and sound cards on the computer on which the

disk image was copied, need not be identical to the ones on the computer on which

the image was generated because the computer will run a full Plug and Play detection

when it starts the first time following installation from the image.

You can run the System Preparation Tool in its default mode by simply double-clicking

the Sysprep.exe file that you extracted from Windows XP deployment tools. Table 3-1

describes some of the optional parameters you can use when running Sysprep.exe.

Table 3-1

Optional Parameters for Sysprep.exe

Switch Description

/quiet Runs with no user interaction because it does not show the user

confirmation dialog boxes

/nosidgen Does not regenerate SID on reboot

/pnp Forces Setup to detect Plug and Play devices on the destination

computers on the next reboot

/reboot Restarts the source computer after Sysprep.exe has completed

/noreboot Shuts down without a reboot

/forceshutdown Forces a shutdown instead of powering off

Note For a complete list of the switches for Sysprep.exe, start a command prompt, change

to the Deploy folder or the folder where you installed Sysprep.exe, type sysprep.exe/?, and

press E

NTER

.

How to Install Windows XP Professional from a Master Disk Image

After running Sysprep on your test computer, you are ready to run a non-Microsoft disk

image copying tool to create a master disk image. Save the new disk image on a shared

folder or CD-ROM, and then copy this image to the multiple destination computers.

End users can then start the destination computers. The Mini-Setup Wizard prompts the

user for computer-specific variables, such as the administrator password for the com-

puter and the computer name. If a sysprep.inf file was provided, the Mini-Setup Wizard

is bypassed, and the system loads Windows XP Professional without user intervention.

You can also automate the completion of the Mini-Setup Wizard further by creating a

sysprep.inf file.