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I ordered 3 three identical machines with Windows 7 Pro pre-installed. Now I need to install identical software on each of them and apply identical Windows configuration to each of them.

I know there are various tools which help you streamline this process (some discussed in Deploying identical setup Windows over multiple computers).

The question is whether it's worth the effort for only 3 PCs as I've never used any of those tools. Is learning and configuring the tools gonna cost more (time-wise) than what I'd save?

Community
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Marcel Stör
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2 Answers2

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The sysprep utility is designed to solve your problem. Running sysprep before you image will clear all the unique ID's and prepare it for imaging.

  1. Set one computer up to your preferences.
  2. Prepare the system with the command sysprep /generalize. The sysprep utility should be located in C:\Windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe. Open cmd.exe and cd to that directory first.
  3. Shutdown the computer.
  4. Boot your preferred disk-imaging software (I recommend Clonezilla if you need something free) and image the drive. Do your best to prevent the computer from booting into Windows before you image it.
  5. Deploy the image on the other computers.
  6. Boot each computer and enjoy!
MetaNova
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Why not set 1 up and then use something like Norton Ghost (or possible free alternatives) to make an image of the hard disk. Then clone the other machines from this image. If the machines are identical this should work well and you have an image you can revert back to if you wish.

Toby Allen
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