Network Administration & Consulting Services

Windows XP Cloning or Universal system installation

Posted Wednesday, 02 May 2007 by Michael Khanin

It's been a while since i first thought of writing about this. I guess now would be a good time. The matter concerns, how to install a Windows XP ( Windows 2000) in about 10-15 minutes, including all the necessary software and settings. This method was tested many times, thanks to this the Windows 2000 was installed on 850 computers, almost unattended. System is working on practicaly every known motherboards. Well, let's begin... First, we need to install the system on a single computer. Make all the necessary settings, changes and configuration. Install all the necessary software. In other words, setup the system and prepare it for cloning process. By the way, I strongly recommend distributive, that does not require activation. I personally used the Windows XP Corporate Edition with integrated SP1. After installing the system, you can clean it up a bit, but it's up to you to decide what should you keep and what is to be removed from the system.

For example I myself perform a little cleanup:

a) Clean the DLL cash. You can perform this operation by runing the following command:

"sfc / cachesize =5" и "sfc / purgecache"

b) Clean the Recicled bin

c) Turn off the System restore and remove the System Volume Information folder from the root

Now let's create a configuration file for cloning. On the CD Windows XP, we look for [cd]:\SUPPORT\TOOLS\DEPLOY.CAB.

Unpack all the files from the CAB. Create the SYSPREP directory on disk "C" and copy all the files you extracted from the DEPLOY.CAB. Now, lunch SETUPMGR.EXE and the Wizard is taking on from here.
Choose Create a new answer file , then Sysprep Install and carefully choose Your Windows version. In the next window, mark Yes, full automate the installation. The new window is poped, where you get to choose different type of options. The Providing the Product Key field requires a special attention. The next field is for system administrators. If you fill the computer name field, all your clones will have that same name and that is not a very good option. If you select the Automatically generate computer name option, the system will provide a random name to every clone computer. Personally I have left this field empty, in this case the system will ask you for the computer name.
There is a whole bunch more interesting parameters, that can be configured in this program. I recommend you to carefully study every option. In the end, all your settings should be saved in the sysprep.inf fail and it should be contained in the C:\SYSPREP directory.

Everything, that is happening from this moment, should be performed without rebooting your system.

The general problem, when you transfer the Windows to a different computer, is the harddrive controller driver.
In most cases, the motherboard, support the standart IDE controller. Therefore, it is recommended to setup the standart IDE driver. The standart IDE driver components, should be placed in the system32\drivers directory. The folder can contain these files already, in that case it is not recommended to replace them. There is another REG -file. You can download it from en.n-admin.com. Download and run the file. It adds to your Windows XP registry, the information on all available types of IDE-controllers.

Now, it wouldn't hurt to delete the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM \MountedDevices\

By doing so we avoid the comparability problem with the signature categories.

As probably most of you know, the Windows XP seperates all of it's components on different types.
For example the "Standart PC", "ACPI PC" and the "ACPI Uniprocessor PC".
I recommend you to copy from your distributive disk, to your wondows folder, different types of HAL's, to be able to choose from them on your first boot step. If you choose to ignore this step, you might face a few unexpected problem with booting. It is also recommended to slightly edit your boot.ini. After you done editing, it should look more or less like so:

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Standart PC" /fastdetect /hal=halstd.dll
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="ACPI PC" /fastdetect /hal=halacpi.dll
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="ACPI Uniprocessor PC " /fastdetect /hal=halmacpi.dll

And now for the final stage.
From the RUN menu, run the following command:

c:\sysprep\sysprep