Oem Licences and Ghost

[people3]

HI

We are about to roll out aproximatly 50 PC's on a new site and would like to speed up the process by using Ghost.

All the new PC's have come with individual Windows Xp PRO OEM licences, and we do not have a volume licence.

What is the best way to install them so we can use the correct Licence Key (we don't want any issues with the Microsoft Validation program or windows Updates)

Many Thanks

 

[drew1701d]

compare two of the PC's and identify the product key used two build both, if its identical and you make an image from one of those PC's you should have no license issues legally cloning them onto identical brand machines. Using that Image on a different brand is where you'd run into license issues. Dell/IBM/HP use a special OEM build licenses to mass produce the workstations, if you want to reload using the CD sent with the system then you will have to go through the hoops of entering the product key and activating that particular license.

 

[nightrax]

You could try a Unattended Installation, to make the process a little quicker.

The only part you will have to enter will be the Licence Key, if you set up the unattended installation correctly you will be able to pre-arrange all the unique machine names as well plus your default settings for each machine.

Try here for more info -

http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/

 

[people3]

Cheers Mightrax

Unattended Installation is proberbly the best way to go

Cheers

 

[tyrant1969]

You could also do a sysprep on the image.

I forget exactly where I got the sysprep folder from, may have been from our XP CD (we have a volume license).

But you can tweak the sysprep.inf file so that it will prompt you for a license code. And since your base PC is an OEM, the other OEM's should (I think) work provided they're all from the same manufacturer.