Creating a Hard Disk Image | Microsoft Office 2003 Editions Resource Kit (Pro-Resource Kit)

Some organizations deploy a complete user system at one time, including Microsoft Windows software, device drivers, Microsoft Office 2003 applications, and custom settings. In this scenario, you install the entire system onto a test computer, and then you create an image of the hard disk to copy to users’ computers.

Installing Office with a complete user system is almost as fast as installing Office by itself. It is a particularly efficient way to configure new computers or to restore a computer to its original state. When you distribute the hard disk image to users, everything on the computer is replaced by your custom configuration, so users must back up any documents or other files they want to keep.

To create the hard disk image, you begin by running Office 2003 Setup with the /a option to create an administrative installation point. If you are including Microsoft Office 2003 Multilingual User Interface Packs in your installation, run MuiSetup.exe with the /a option and install the MUI Packs on the same administrative installation point.

Alternatively, if you want to take advantage of new Setup functionality and create a local installation source on users’ computers, you can create a compressed CD image by copying the contents of the Office CD and MUI Pack CDs to a network share. You customize the compressed image the same way you customize an administrative image. For more information, see “Taking Advantage of a Local Installation Source” in Chapter 3, “Preparing to Deploy Office 2003.”

Customize user settings

If your hard disk image includes custom settings captured in an Office profile settings file (OPS file), then you must first install Office 2003 and the MUI Packs from the installation image to a separate test computer. After you configure the settings you want, run the Profile Wizard to capture them in the OPS file.

To customize users settings on the Office 2003 image by using an OPS file

Install Office from the installation image to a test computer.
On the test computer, run the Office applications and modify application settings, and then close all the Office applications.
Start the Profile Wizard.
On the Save or Restore Settings page, click Save the settings from this machine.
Enter the file name and path for the OPS file, and click Finish.
When you create the transform, enter the file name and path of the OPS file on the Customize Default User Settings page of the Custom Installation Wizard.

Note that you do not run the Profile Wizard on the computer you intend to image. If you start any Office applications on that computer, then user- and computer-specific settings are included in the hard disk image.

Customize Office on the installation image

You can use the Custom Installation Wizard to create a transform and you can modify the Setup settings file (Setup.ini), just as you do when you customize Office 2003 in any other network installation scenario. In addition, you must take several steps to exclude user-specific information from the hard disk image.

To customize Office 2003 for a hard disk image

Start the Custom Installation Wizard.
On the Customize Default User Settings page, specify the name and path of any Office profile settings file (OPS file) you have created.
On the Set Feature Installation States page, set installation states for each Office application.
On the Modify Setup Properties page, set the NOUSERNAME property to True.

This property prevents Setup from defining a user name during installation and allows users to enter their own user names the first time they run an Office application.
If you are installing Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, choose to create a new Outlook profile on the Outlook: Customize Default Profile page, and configure the profile on subsequent pages of the wizard.
Make any additional customizations and save the transform.
Open the Setup settings file (Setup.ini) and specify the transform you created, along with any other modifications you want to make.

For example, add MUI Packs to the [ChainedInstall_n] sections of Setup.ini. If you are installing from a compressed CD image, customize local installation source options in the [Cache] section.

Install Office on a clean test computer

The next step is to install Office 2003 from the installation image to a clean client computer—one that already has the Windows configuration you want and one that has never had Office 2003 or any previous version of Office installed. This installation becomes the model for your hard disk image.

After you have installed and configured all the system software on the test computer, run Office Setup to install Office from the installation image.

To install Office on the test computer

Install Office from the administrative installation point or compressed CD image.
If you created a custom INI file, specify it by using the /settings command-line option.
If you have not already done so, set the NOUSERNAME property on the command line; for example:
```
\\server\share\admin_install_point\setup.exe NOUSERNAME=True
```
Unless you want all users who receive the hard disk image to use your installation image as a source for installing, repairing, or removing Office features, reset the source list to point to the Office CD or another network share.

Caution

To help prevent user-specific information from appearing on the hard disk image, do not start any Office applications on the test computer. After you install Office on the test computer, you can make additional modifications to the configuration. However, starting an Office application writes user-specific information to the Windows registry, which is then duplicated to all users.

Distribute the hard disk image

After you test the hard disk image to make sure that Office 2003 applications are installed and configured correctly, you can use any one of a number of tools to replicate the hard disk image. The Windows operating system includes several new or improved technologies for automating the installation of the Windows client and Office on users’ computers through hard disk imaging.

System Preparation Tool

The Microsoft Windows System Preparation Tool (SysPrep.exe), which is included with Windows 2000 or later, prepares the hard disk on the test computer for duplicating and for customizing client installations with computer-specific information such as user name, computer name, and domain membership. Once the hard disk is prepared, administrators can quickly and efficiently deploy Windows and Office throughout their organization by using a disk-imaging tool to replicate the image to client computers.

For more information about SysPrep.exe, see the white paper “Automating Windows 2000 Deployments with Sysprep” on the Windows 2000 Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/planning/incremental/sysprep11.asp.

To download the most up-to-date version of SysPrep.exe, see Windows 2000 System Preparation Tool on the Windows 2000 Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/downloads/tools/sysprep/default.asp.

Remote Installation Services

Remote Installation Services (RIS), which ships with Windows 2000 or later, installs an administrator-configured image of the Windows client remotely on users’ computers. You can include Office 2003 in the RIS image. After using RIS to install Windows on a test computer, you customize and install Office 2003 on the same test computer. Then you run the Remote Installation Preparation Wizard (RIPrep.exe) to create an image of the hard disk on the RIS server. When clients connect to the RIS server remotely, they install both the Windows client and Office 2003 with your configuration settings.

RIS allows you to set up new computers and new users without on-site technical support and to recover more quickly from computer failures. Unlike SysPrep, however, RIS requires relies heavily on network resources, including network capacity and the Active Directory directory service.

For a detailed outline of the steps necessary to install, configure, and use Remote Installation Services (RIS), see the Step-by-Step Guide to Remote OS Installation on the Microsoft Windows 2000 Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo
/planning/management/remotesteps.asp.

To find out how to create an installation image by using the Remote Installation Preparation Wizard, search for Creating an installation image in the Windows 2000 Server Help page on the Microsoft Windows 2000 Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/help/default.asp?url=/windows2000/en/server/help/.