Why Do You Customize Your Install?

[Wicked187]

Please Post a Response

I have been visiting this site for the past few days, and it has helped me move towards better standardization on the desktop for my company. I am just wondering how many people here are doing this to help their home setup, and how many people here are trying to streamline IT processes for their company.

A little background to my situation... I work for a hotel amenities manufacturer, and we currently have 2 locations, one in the US (Corporate), and one in the UK. We have only recently had the UK office, and even more recently has my employment started. So, I inherited our network, and all of it's problems (as so many admins do). Recently, I went on a trip to our UK office to standardize everything, and figure out why they were having issues connecting to our AS/400. It turned out that Welchia was loose on the network and congested their DSL connection, and thus the VPN connection to the corporate office. I decided to go ahead and reinstall all the desktop computers, since I wanted to standardize anyway, and clean up the servers. Before, I had done a major deployment of Windows 2000 with RIS and Group Policy to install all the software. It worked great. But, never again was I able to use RIS successfully. My plan for this trip was to use Sysprep to prepare images and then use Ghost to deploy them. This fell through because the hardware was too dissimalar. So, I was forced to work 37 hours straight and reinstall every computer manually, in order to meet my deadline and get back on the plane to go home.

This experience left me thoroughly upset, and I decided that this cannot happen again. So two weeks ago I started looking for a better solution. RIS was in the circular bin because it's limited set of NICs supported, and disk duplication was out because of dissimilar hardware... Doing an unattended install seemed the most reliable way to get things done... now how do I make it easier? I decided I was going to look for WinPE and see what it could offer, which lead me to finding PE-Builder, a nice free app that makes a bootable Windows XP environment on a CD... now I use this to kickstart an unattended install over the network, and all is starting to pan out well.

If any of you are admins that use this to make your life easier, let me know what things you are doing. As for myself... I like installing and having SP1, SRP1 and the rest of the hotfixes installed, I am now looking to keep this silly playschool setup out of the office and use the Classic setup. The biggest problem, I think, faced by admins, is locking users down, and making things work in a multi-user environment. If really do not want the install to have to log in once and run some apps, and then hope that things work for all users... So I think I will stick with using Group Policy for deploying most apps, especially Office.

[Wicked187]

*bump*

Please help a guy out and respond with any suggestions and experiences

[Jono]

i am a little unsure i know how to setup a group policy on winxp pro machine but how do i replicate this to my automated cd, and accross a network so far i have not needed to do so but maybe in future who knows and you obviosly seem to know what your doing

[Wicked187]

Group Policy has to be done from an Active Directory server. You wouldn't be replicating it to your CD, everything would automatically install after being joined to the Active Directory domain, which can be automated by an unattend script. There are various modes to distribute software via Group Policy, but basically what happens is things get installed to computers automatically, based on what you set in a database, either because of the user logged in or the computer itself.

[Jono]

and used with standalone machines? i do not wish to setup the computers i install to a domain or even networked these are machines which are at people house totally standalone i want so i use unattended cd and a default set of group policy is in effect at first logon.

[Wicked187]

Absolutely. This is not something made for standalone machines, this is made for corporate networks and such. Having a CD or 2 would be a lot easier for something like that.

[bjdotcom]

I feel bored sometimes....lol

So i come to this site MSFN

But the most happening Topic is this Unattended Forum...lol

I see new things happening in here.....So i just add them and fire them in my Virtual PC....it takes time...well....it passes my time tooo....Sometimes i get fed up!....lol

Tomorrow I will know whats the real meaning of Unatteded....in the IT world!...lol

Cheers,

bj.

[webmedic]

well I'm a network admin on a smaller scale. I support local small business with network and system support but I also support allot of home users.

I own a small computer store and for me as it is is for you is to make a pleasant system. To this end I do use a custom theme but it is an xp theme and not the classic one. It just looks much nicer. I also do a few things like adding my computer, network palces and my documents to the desktop.

The way I see it I want this thing to be as comfortable for them as possible. I still get allot of users complaining about the looks of xp or this or that little thing so I want it to be pain free for them. To this end I disable allot of the security realted issues in xp but leave a few things like autoupdate turned on. This way it is much safer for the regular home user to work with.

Hope that helps some.

[un4given1]

I customize my installations for the purpose of creating company standards and speeding up installations. My installations differ from most of the users here because I do not use CDs. I use Windows Server 2003 Remote Installation Services. I started working for the company I do over a year and a half ago. At that time we did installations using a CD and clicking "Next." I begged to get a server set up with RIS. I had heard a lot of good things about it and knew that it would benefit us. They gave me an old server and put Windows 2000 Server on it and gave me full rights to do whatever I wanted with it. In the last year I have turned it around to the point where I just got a new server with Windows Server 2003 on it and they have made it a production box and gave me full administration rights. I administer the Server, the images, all software, Office administration points and anything dealing with automation. I do a lot more but RIS is the fun part of my job. I love manipulating it to do exactly what I want. We have a Windows XP rollout comming up in about a month and I have been put in charge of the whole thing. I am responsible for every PC that will be on our network. That is over 500 in 16 different locations. And (if you read my update to my RIS thread earlier today) I just figured out a new method to better speed installations by allowing for a technician to select a users job function or even one by one software packages during the CIW of RIS. Before the installation was done by RIS and then I would run a software script that I made that would ask you a series of questions about which versions of software you want to install, if it was a laptop or desktop, and a bunch of other things and then it would isntall them all unattended, but it was a 2 step process. I scoured the web looking for information on how to do it and I can guarantee that not one person has documented it. I will be doing so on my website very soon for everyone who is interested. I love my job. There are a lot of good ideas available here and everywhere else, but the truth is that if you can think it then you can do it. Nothing isn't possible.

[webmedic]

hm interesting I have some links for do auto installs using linux as the install host. If i ever do that kind of thing I will most likely do it that way. I have tinkered wiht the idea a few times. The nice thing about hte linux solution is it works well and is free. I can save my local companies lots of money doing these kinds of things.

I have one server for an office running windows doing file print and websharing/firewall services. Windows does not directly have anything comparable and if I did purchase jsut the windows server 2003 for them it would have been at least $1000 for the amount of clinets they have. and they still would have had to pay another $1500 or so for the server itself. By using linux on the server I was able to cut out at least $1000 worth of fat and that does not include the other software that would have been needed to do the connection sharing properly.

The object is to find a good mix and let linux do most the server chores and use windows for the clients if need be.

I have to admit though there is another company I work for that uses server 2000. It's just to buggy though I would not atempt to do any of the server stuff I do with anything less that server 2003 but I have not had the opertunity yet and since linux fills the spot for 99% of the things I have not found a reason to get it and try it out.

[un4given1]

webmedic: with a Windows 2000/2003 server environment we have had a 99.9% uptime in the past 2 years. It's all about who is administering the systems. I am an MS supporter. You are not. There is nothing wrong with that. We could argue it all day long. Whatever works for one person might not work for another. The Linux solution you speak of is just using Linux as a Windows share and doing a network unattended installation. Even that isn't close to what RIS really is. If you feel you can save thousands of dollars doing it all with Linux, then more power to you. Windows Server 2003 is three times the server Windows 2000 Server was. It's stable, very stable.

[webmedic]

no I didn't say that windows has it's place. but you forget I get to see the really slimmy part all the time. It's completely different if you have the machines locked down so the users cant do anything with them. I get to see all the home user stuff and the things they do. After all this is said like I said for me windows has it's place I dont use linux for everything. In the cases I mentioned it is a cost saving thing. that is very important to my customers and of course stibility or usability with linux is not an issue at all. I do have more windows installs then linux though.

For myself I prefer linux yes but then i have been using it for years. Almost as long as windows.

[neophyte]

Suggestion.

Next time your network systems are being updated, why not make as many of them as possible the same hardware config? Then you can make ghost rollout a possiblity.

Of course, this is never really going to happen on the scale you might want it to, but its a start

[un4given1]

Using ghost is not a possiblity in a situation such as mine. You would have to worry about SIDs and joining each PC to the domain manually. I do not recommend ghost to anyone because I do not feel that it is a 100% solution. If configured properly you can use one image using a CD or RIS that will work on EVERY PC. I use one image on more than 20 different computer configurations and I do not have any issues except the occasional missing NIC drivers which are easily updated.

Oh, and not to mention the cost factor of updating hundreds of PCs. The hardware itself is expensive enough, but then so is the software. Most PCs were purchased with OEM licenses and the software can not be reused. It's not until recently that we became a select partner and have open license.

[un4given1]

RIS was in the circular bin because it's limited set of NICs supported, and disk duplication was out because of dissimilar hardware...

There isn't a NIC card that can not be added to the RIS server. It's rather simple. You just place the drivers for the NIC in a folder and use "OEMDriverPath" (I think that's it) to point to the drivers. There are very few occasions that this will not work, but I have run across a situation where I had to copy 2 of the files to the i386 directory. Let me know if you want more information on this.