Automating HP Recovery

[Froberg]

Hi all.

I have recently gotten a new job, at a somewhat smaller company than I am used to.

We're looking at 1-200 machines total, nothing more.

Compared to my old place of work with closer to 3000 machines running at any one time, it's quite the difference in pace.

However, I have gotten so used to unattended set-ups that it's not even funny. We do a lot of stuff via group policies, such as deploying office etc. But the installation of Windows is done manually, by hand, each time. Using recovery discs, XP discs and locating drivers after.. etc.

It's all very time consuming. My current boss doesn't really care, he says it's just a "keystroke when you pass it once in a while".. Me; I'm more of a "run it leave it" kind of guy, so I can focus on other tasks.

Not to mention that some of these recovery media are without a service pack, some with SP1.

At any rate, is there any way I can update these recovery media, in to one DVD - perhaps - as in, slipstreaming service packs and updates, and have the same functionality intact as before? (Perhabs not include some of the more... annoying Hewlett Packard bundled software.)

I've searched and searched, but without much luck. I hope you can help me out here.

I appreciate any and all help.

[uid0]

If you have a vanilla xp oem cd without the crapware, you can slipstream sp3 and have it preactivate:

http://www.msfn.org/board/Multi-Manufactur...ion-t71016.html

[Froberg]

Is it just me, or is the explanation of how this is meant to work lacking?

What about drivers for the various types of machines, etc.?

[uid0]

It's a long thread... Just replace the 4 oembios files with ones from a preactivated first install or recovery install, and use a key decoder to get a royalty oem key to put in winnt.sif.

For drivers, try driverpacks.net

Edited September 3, 2008 by uid0

[Froberg]

I get where you're coming from, but I'm not sure if this isn't really more work in the end.

Some of the machines are DX2000's by HP, and they don't have a DVD drive, so I'm highly limited as far as choices of what to include on the disc goes.

I tried buffing the DX2000 installation media from SP1 to SP2, that increased the image size to 900 megs though, which is a touch too much.