Recipe 2.5. Cloning Windows XP Installations

Problem

You have one machine that you'd like to clone onto multiple machines.

Solution

Use SYSPREP to accomplish this. First, configure and arrange the initial machine as you like it, using the local administrator account. Then:

1. Create a new local administrator. See Chapter 15 for instructions on creating local users.

2. Log out of the local administrator account and log in to the new account you created.

3. Navigate to the System applet inside Control Panel. Under the Advanced tab, click the User Profiles button.

4. Select the one called Administrator that has the local machine's name in it, and click Copy To.

5. Click Change in the Permitted to Use section.

6. Select Everyone in the list. This gives permission for anybody logged into the computer to use the contents of the profile. Click OK.

7. Click OK to get out of the Copy To dialog box.

8. Finally, copy the contents of the Documents and Settings\Administrator folder to Documents and Settings\Default Users. Ensure that you are displaying hidden files and folders so that you copy all configuration files.

9. Now, run SYSPREP with the following command:

   > sysprep -reseal -quiet -mini -pnp

   
   

   SYSPREP will strip the SIDs off the system, scrub any personal identifying information from the image, and then shut down the machine. From that point, use a drive copying utility to move the images to multiple machines.

   Once the copy is complete, reboot the computer without the floppy and proceed through mini-Setup again, so that all personal information can be restored and new SIDs can be generated. Do this on the cloned computers and the original "prototype" computer.

Discussion

Products like Symantec Ghost are often the quickest way to lay down an image of a drive onto multiple systems at once. The downside is that by taking what amounts to a photograph of a machine, any security identifiers (SIDs) that are stored on the machine are replicated in that image to other machines. The result would be multiple machines with identical SIDs, which can cause a lot of problems on your network.

Ghost and DriveImage have SID generators built in, but Microsoft doesn't support that. The company wants you to use SYSPREP instead, which scrubs SIDs from an image in a supported fashion so that you can clone a machine easily.

SYSPREP works with other operating systems besides Windows XP; however, SYSPREP will not image a domain controller, a certificate server, or a member of a cluster.

See Also

Recipe 2.4 for installing from an unattended installation, and "Customizing SYSPREP Installations" (http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/ reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/reskit/en-us/ prbc_cai_oziz.asp)