Laptop Hell

[BillyCarpenter]

Ingalls Shipyard donated 30 laptops to a customer of mine. They were wiped clean. I have to install the operating system, drivers, ect. Talk about a long and boring job.





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[Gift]

Re: Laptop Hell

Ingalls Shipyard donated 30 laptops to a customer of mine. They were wiped clean. I have to install the operating system, drivers, ect. Talk about a long and boring job.





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Can't you do this just once and then clone the drive?

[techsxge]

Re: Laptop Hell

Can't you do this just once and then clone the drive?

This. Cloning Images is a thing.

If you have the same latops there (Which it looks like) Install one Notebook to a certain standard (Update Windows, install drivers, install basic software) Then use Sysprep to generalize the Image and set up network share for it.
Then use a USB Thumb Drive with a Windows Installation Software setup, start the installation process and Press shift + f10.
Then use robocopy to g rab the copy from your network share to the current pc:

robocopy \\10.10.0.1\share\YourWindowsImage C:\YourWindowsImageOnNewLaptop /E

Now, you can mount and use this image with dism:

dism /apply-image /imagefile:C:\YourWindowsImageOnNewLaptop\install.wim /index:1 /applydir:C:\

With this, you will not have to setup so much stuff than you would with a manual install on every single laptop. For myself, this saved me around 4-5 hours of work once

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: Laptop Hell

Duh. I can't believe I didn't think to clone the drive and all the laptops are identical. Although, I can't find my external hard drive to clone the image to. I still have about 15 left to do and I will clone. Thanks for the suggestion.

[techsxge]

Re: Laptop Hell

Duh. I can't believe I didn't think to clone the drive and all the laptops are identical. Although, I can't find my external hard drive to clone the image to. I still have about 15 left to do and I will clone. Thanks for the suggestion.

How did you install the other 15 if you dont have a usb thumb drive or something?

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: Laptop Hell

How did you install the other 15 if you dont have a usb thumb drive or something?

I have a USB but it will not let me create a system image on a USB. I've tried two of them. Both were NTFS format. It says this drive is not a valid location.

I have a 2TB external hard drive that I use but can't locate at the moment.

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: Laptop Hell

I found my external drive. Off to the races.

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: Laptop Hell

Cloning is definitely the way to go. Much faster. Thank you everyone.

[techsxge]

Re: Laptop Hell

Cloning is definitely the way to go. Much faster. Thank you everyone.

Honestly no idea how long i'd have taken with the setup of this one customer with their 90 PCs if i had no premade image of the OS

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: Laptop Hell

Honestly no idea how long i'd have taken with the setup of this one customer with their 90 PCs if i had no premade image of the OS

A long f'n time., That's how long. lol.

[rthonpm]

Re: Laptop Hell

Keep in mind with cloning that unless your client has a Volume License for Windows that they're out of compliance as you only have image rights with a MAK or KMS license.

Yeah, Microsoft licensing is not very easy to get a hold of. Between CALs, OS licenses and everything else it can get opaque very fast.

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: Laptop Hell

Keep in mind with cloning that unless your client has a Volume License for Windows that they're out of compliance as you only have image rights with a MAK or KMS license.

Yeah, Microsoft licensing is not very easy to get a hold of. Between CALs, OS licenses and everything else it can get opaque very fast.

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

I didn't think about that!!!

[slimslob]

Re: Laptop Hell

Duh. I can't believe I didn't think to clone the drive and all the laptops are identical. Although, I can't find my external hard drive to clone the image to. I still have about 15 left to do and I will clone. Thanks for the suggestion.

Did you contact the manufacturer? With the serial numbers they might be able to with the Windows activation codes for each in case Microsoft's activation server does not recognize them.

[rthonpm]

Re: Laptop Hell

Did you contact the manufacturer? With the serial numbers they might be able to with the Windows activation codes for each in case Microsoft's activation server does not recognize them.

Modern equipment (anything since the Windows 8 era) has the OEM key in the BIOS so that the OS will automatically activate against it.

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

[techsxge]

Re: Laptop Hell

Keep in mind with cloning that unless your client has a Volume License for Windows that they're out of compliance as you only have image rights with a MAK or KMS license.

Yeah, Microsoft licensing is not very easy to get a hold of. Between CALs, OS licenses and everything else it can get opaque very fast.

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

That's why you make a premade image without a license and use sysprep for generalizing the image. You can then license each invidual station