Clone Microsoft Windows XP I

Clone Microsoft Windows XP using Sysprep and Norton Ghost, Part I: Introduction

Introduction

If you are a corporate administrator or an IT staff, you may have confront a situation that you have to install and setup Windows XP on many computers which all computers have identical hardware configurations. What will you do? Go to each computer, sit and manually install Windows XP? If only a few computers, it's OK to do that. It would takes few hours to complete that. But what if there are more than 10 computers or 100 computers waiting you to install and setup. That would be painful to do that way.
Note: This topic isn't a new technology but I think it may be useful to many people so I decide to post it.

The series is divided into 4 parts:

1. Clone Microsoft Windows XP using Sysprep and Norton Ghost, Part I: Introduction
2. 
   
3. Clone Microsoft Windows XP using Sysprep and Norton Ghost, Part II: Prepare Source for Disk Duplication
4. Clone Microsoft Windows XP using Sysprep and Norton Ghost, Part III: Duplicate Disk with Norton Ghost
5. Clone Microsoft Windows XP using Sysprep and Norton Ghost, Part IV: Finalize Cloned Disk

The common way which is widely use to do this task is called Cloning, Imaging or Ghost (The name comes from Norton Ghost which is a popular Disk Imaging Software in the old days). Cloning, the name has already described what it does. It creates image file bit-by-bit from source disk and then restores the data on destination disk. So that the destination disk has the same data as the source disk. This can be done using Disk Imaging Softwares such as Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, R-Drive Image, Paragon Drive Backup, etc. In this tutorial, I'll use the popular one Norton Ghost.

But wait, don't start cloning a disk now. There is one problem since Microsoft Windows 2000 has assigned a unique security ID (SID) to each computer when it was installed. If you cloned the Windows, they would have the same SID and may cause many problems when both computers are in the same domain. On stand-alone computer, this is not a problem. But you can't join the cloned computer to same domain as the original computer.

So to prevent duplicated SID, Microsoft provides a tool "Sysprep" to handle this problem. Sysprep is a tool to deploy Windows XP on multiple computers. Sysprep prepares the sample computer for cloning. After cloned, Sysprep modifies the local computer security ID (SID) on the destination computer the first time the computer is restarted so that the SID is unique to each computer. The requirements for using Sysprep as part of disk duplication process are at the following:

• The master installation and the destination computers must have compatible hardware abstraction layers (HALs). For more information on HAL compatiblity use the following knowledgebase article: Q309283 HAL options after Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 Setup.
• The mass–storage controllers (IDE or SCSI) must be identical between the reference and destination computers.
• Plug and Play devices such as modems, sound cards, network cards, video cards, and so on, do not have to be the same. However, any device drivers not included in Drivers.cab should be included in the master installation before you run Sysprep. Alternatively, make sure the uninstalled drivers are available on the destination computer at first run, so Plug and Play can detect and install the drivers.
• Third–party software or disk–duplicating hardware devices are required. These products create binary images of a computer's hard disk, and they either duplicate the image to another hard disk or store the image in a file on a separate disk.
• The size of the destination computer's hard disk must be at least the same size as the hard disk of the master installation. If the destination computer has a larger hard disk, the difference is not included in the primary partition. However, you can use the ExtendOemPartition entry in the Sysprep.inf file to extend the primary partition if it was formatted to use the NTFS file system.

Reference: How to Prepare Images for Disk Duplication with Sysprep

There are also some notes that you should know about Sysprep tool:

• Sysprep runs only if the computer is a member of a workgroup, not a domain. If the computer is joined to a domain, Sysprep removes it from the domain.
• You cannot run Sysprep on a computer that has been configured as a Cluster Service server, a Certificate Services server, or a domain controller. You can run Sysprep on a standalone server.
• If you run Sysprep on an NTFS file system partition that contains encrypted files or folders, the data in those folders become completely unreadable and unrecoverable.
• You can only use this version of Sysprep on Windows XP installations. You cannot use this version of Sysprep on a Windows 2000 installation.

For full information about Sysprep, see How to Use Sysprep: An Introduction and What Is Sysprep?

In this series, I'll show you how to duplicate Windows XP by disk to disk only. But in the production environment, you can apply to clone through network so that you don't have to touch any hardware device. But this way requires that the network should be fast enough (at least should be fast Ethernet – 100 Mbps). Otherwise, the network may be congested and resulting in slow down network application and cloning will takes too much time.

Summary

Now you have understand things to clone Windows XP. Here are summarize steps you have to perform:

1. Use Sysprep to prepare source disk for cloning.
2. Create Image file from a source disk and restore to destination disk. Or may be cloning by Disk-to-Disk.
3. Finalize the destination disk for production use. This will be automatically run by Sysprep tool.

Clone Microsoft Windows XP II

Clone Microsoft Windows XP using Sysprep and Norton Ghost, Part II: Prepare Source for Disk Duplication

Prepare Source for Disk Duplication

In this post, I'll show you how to create an Answer file for using when setup Windows after a computer is cloned. And run Sysprep tool to prepare a computer to be a sample computer (source disk) for cloning.

The Answer file should contains only general configuration not unique value on each computer. For instance, if you're going to deploy the image to all computers in the same time zone, it is good to configure time zone in the answer file so that you don't have to set time zone on each computer after cloned them. But if you're going to deploy the image in different time zone, you should not configure time zone in the answer file.

You can see the index of this series at Clone Microsoft Windows XP using Sysprep and Norton Ghost, Part I: Introduction

Step-by-step

1. Install Windows XP, update patches and setup the basic applications on the sample computer.
   
2. Extract Sysprep tool. Insert the Windows XP CD. Navigate to "CD-Rom DriveSUPPORTTOOLS" and extract deploy.cab to C:Sysprep. If you don't have Windows XP CD, you can download the Sysprep tool from Microsoft.
   Note: You have to use the Sysprep tool version according to Windows version. For example, you should not use Sysprep for Windows XP on Windows Server 2003.
   
3. Run Setup Manager to create an Answer file. Double-click on setupmgr.exe.
   
4. On Welcome to Setup Manager,click Next.
   
5. On New or Existing Answer File, select Create new. Click Next.
   
6. On Type of Setup, select Sysprep setup. Click Next.
   
7. On Product, select Windows XP Professional. Click Next.
   
8. On License Agreement, select No, do not fully automate the installation. Click Next.
   
9. Now you can configure the general configuration in your environment. I'll show sample configuration.
   On Name and Organization, enter the Name and the Organization.
   
10. On Time Zone, select the time zone.
    
11. On Product Key, enter the Windows product key if you have Windows corporate key (one key can be installed on many computers). If you have an unique key on each computer, leave this empty.
    
12. On Computer Name, select Automatically generate computer name so that each computer after cloned and run sysprep, it'll has unique computer name (Auto-generated name).
    
13. On Administrator Password, leave as default.
    
14. On Workgroup or Domain, leave as default.
    
15. On Identification String, give some name to identify this sysprep image. It'll keep this information in the registry so you'll know that this computer was cloned from which Sysprep image. Click Finish.
    
16. Save the .inf file. This is the Answer file that you've configured. Save it in the same folder and click OK.
    
17. After the Answer File has been saved, click Cancel to exit Setup Manager
    
18. You noticed the Sysprep's Answer file has been created in Windows Explorer.
    
19. Next, let's prepare this computer as a sample computer for cloning by run Sysprep.exe.
    
20. It shows a warning message. Just click OK.
    
21. To make Sysprep use Answer file after cloned, check on Mini-Setup. Select Shutdown mode to Shutdown. Click Reseal.
    
22. It shows a warning message again that after reboot the security identifiers (SIDs) will be regenerate. This is what we want after clone the disk. Click OK.
    
23. Sysprep is working.
    
24. The sample computer is shutting down. After the system shutdown, its disk can now be cloned to other disk now. Next post, I'll show how to clone a disk to disk using Norton Ghost.
    

Clone Microsoft Windows XP

Clone Microsoft Windows XP using Sysprep and Norton Ghost, Part III: Duplicate Disk with Norton Ghost

Duplicate Disk with Norton Ghost

In this post, I'll show you how to clone a disk to disk using Norton Ghost. From last post, I have run Sysprep tool to prepare the disk for cloning. This is just an example so I've attached another disk to this computer and I'm going to clone disk to disk. Then, I'll get the cloned disk to attach to another PC and run Mini-setup which will be show in the next post.

If you're going to apply this tutorial in a corporate, you should clone the sample computer's disk to an image file and store it on a file server (or any place on the network). When you want a new computer, you simple restore image file from the file server through network without touching any hardware device.

Requirement

• Norton Ghost software

Step-by-step

1. Booting the PC in DOS and run Norton Ghost. Click OK
   Note: You need Norton Ghost since it is a licensed software, I can't distribute it. If you already have one, you can create an emergency diskette to boot into DOS mode.
   
2. Perform Disk to Disk operation. Select Local -> Disk -> To Disk.
   
3. Select Source Drive. Click OK.
   
4. Select Destination Drive. Click OK.
   
5. On Destination Drive Details, click OK.
   
6. The message notifies you that data on the destination drive will be overwritten. Click Yes.
   
7. The clone is finished. Next, I'll shutdown the PC and detach the cloned disk to attach to another PC and run Mini-setup which I'll show in the next post.