Introduction

Windows installations have matured over the years and have become the gold standard for user-friendly setup procedures across all different platforms. Most users will encounter the installation process only once when they first purchase Windows XP and those who buy computers with Windows XP pre-installed are subjected to even less of the installation procedure. Thus, the majority of advice in this book will be about using and administering Windows XP after it is installed.

However, there are always some things to remember when preparing for a Windows XP deployment, creating customized installations of multiple operating systems, and keeping those deployments up to date, and that is the focus of this chapter. You'll find recipes that include very generic solutions, as sometimes there is only one way to do it, but you'll also find other recipes including both GUI and command line methods, and some recipes on updating Windows XP that include Group Policy methods.