CompTIA A_ Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Seventh Edition - Michael Meyers [233]
To create such an image, you must use a couple more tools in the AIK—Windows PE and ImageX—to “capture” the installation and create a disc image from it. If the rest of the process seemed a bit complicated, this part is like solving a Rubik’s cube with your teeth while balancing on top of a flag pole and juggling. Suffice it to say that the AIK comes with documentation that tells you how to do this, so with a bit of patience, you can get through it.
Figure 14-38 The list of components in the Image Monitor
After you’ve created an image from your Master Installation file, you can burn it to discs or share it on a network to set up new computers. All in all, this is an extremely complicated process that will, when you’re finished with it, make installing Windows Vista a snap.
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NOTE You can save time by “slipstreaming” your installation files to include the latest patches. See the following site for instructions on how to merge (slipstream) Service Pack 3 into your Windows XP installation files:
www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/Slipstreaming_Windows_XP_Service_Pack_3.html
You can also slipstream Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (though not, as of this writing, Service Pack 2) into a Vista installation disc. Check out the following article for instructions:
www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsVista/Slipstream_Windows_Vista_SPI.html
Scripted installations are a fine option, but they don’t work well in all scenarios. Creating a fully scripted installation, including the installation of all additional drivers, software updates, and applications, can be a time-consuming process involving lots of trial-and-error adjustments. Wouldn’t it be easier, at least some of the time, to manually set up one PC exactly the way you want it, and then automatically create exact copies of that installation on other machines? That’s where disk cloning comes into play.
Disk Cloning
Disk cloning simply takes an existing PC and makes a full copy of the drive, including all data, software, and configuration files. You can then transfer that copy to as many machines as you like, essentially creating clones of the original machine. In the old days, making a clone was pretty simple. You just hooked up two hard drives and copied the files from the original to the clone by using something like the venerable XCOPY program (as long as the hard drive was formatted with FAT or FAT32). Today, you’ll want to use a more sophisticated program, such as Norton Ghost, to make an image file that contains a copy of an entire hard drive and then lets you copy that image either locally or over the network.
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NOTE Norton Ghost is not the only disk imaging software out there, but it is so widely used that techs often refer to disk cloning as “ghosting the drive.”
Sysprep
Cloning a Windows PC works great for some situations, but what if you need to send the same image out to machines that have slightly different hardware? What if you need the customer to go through the final steps of the Windows installation (creating a user account, accepting the license agreement, etc.)? That’s when you need to combine a scripted setup with cloning by using the System Preparation Tool, Sysprep, which can undo portions of the Windows installation process.
After installing Windows and adding any additional software (Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, Yahoo Instant Messenger, etc.), run Sysprep (Figure 14-39) and then create your disk image by using the cloning application of your choice. The first time a new system cloned from the image boots, an abbreviated version of setup, Mini-Setup, runs and completes the last few steps of the installation process: installing drivers for hardware, prompting the user to accept the license agreement and create user accounts, and