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Best way to upgrade XP to 7 on mulitple computers in a business?
I am part of the IT department in the business i work for. We just closed a deal with microsoft and (to my best knowledge) will be needing to upgrade all computers to windows 7 professional(or ultimate, to make it easier for the IS dept).
*bear with me, this is my first ever forum post
I just recently began with this employer so i don't have alot of real world experience. Most of the things i have done was in college. The business i work for has many different branches in many different locations and states.
I have done some research on the subject so i have a few ideas on how to do this upgrade, but i am not sure which will be 'easier'. I need a solution that will not require alot of man power, bc we are kinda thin in alot of our locations to have 'boots on the ground' to do this project.
Hardware:
Dell computers (varying on models)
most computers have (at least) 2GB memory, 80GB+ HDD
most computers only have a CDROM drive
computers are either running XP SP3 or 7professional
My thoughts:
I have experience with making an image of a computer and saving it to a server(from a previous job), and believe that to be the best option for this project because we use alot of programs with specific settings, and there are quite a few users out there(like managers, dedicated security camera computers, etc)that also require certain hardware, software and network configurations.
This would be the best decision if all the locations had the same(not sure if this is the correct terminology) bandwidth. There is too much of a chance the data would corrupt because of the bottleneck that would occur at the hub.
ex: My location --data--->hub ----data-->location
One of my peers in the department, has suggested we install 7 and setup a hdd like we would a new PC, pull the hard drive, then go to each location and swap out the hard drives, do a little configuration and we should be good.
so, since the above is clear as mud, here are the idea being tossed around the dept:
1. install 7 onto a hdd then swap them out for the 'old' hdd at each location
2. deploy image
3. create boot disc install/setup desktop at each location for each user
Before doing any of this, i know we would have to run the windows 7 upgrade advisor and make sure all the current hardware is capable of even running windows 7. After that is finished and all the hardware is upgraded to the recommended settings to run windows 7, would be the installing of 7.
At each location there is, user computers and a computer used solely to scan documents. It is sent either to the user's email or a file that is shared to the user's computer from the scan computer.
I know you can deploy images over the network, so i thought we could store the necessary files on this scan computer and deploy the windows 7 image to each computer on that location's network.
If you can't do it from the scan machine, i have heard of, the fog project and wondered, it would be easier to install fog onto a laptop, have the image of windows 7(1 image for each of the different models and an image for the users who need special programs that are licensed) on an external hdd attached to the laptop, then deploy the image to each user's computer(or group of user's computers) from the laptop so it doesn't stop user needing access to the scan computer.
not sure if that all made sense, or if it was an information overload, but like i am still green with alot of this stuff, and this is the first time i have ever posted in a forum.
Last edited by hrhartist; 17 Jul 2012 at 16:47.