Question - so audit mode will let me essentially edit a default profile? Or am I misunderstanding that? I was just wondering if it was possible to do the stuff in audit mode then not even use sysprep, but instead use my 3rd party tools after that?
Depends on what you mean with default profile. Normally you need to use sysprep to generalize the image, make it hardware independent.
If you interrupt the install procedure to enter Audit Mode as I told in my previous post, no user profiles are yet created. You enter in Windows 7 in Audit Mode using the native, built-in administrator account.
An example scenario: you need to install Seven on 10 computers in an office. All computers should have the normal Windows 7 setup, plus Virtual PC with XP Mode installed. All computers should have two user accounts, one administrator account called NetworkAdmin, and one standard user account called Office.
So, you enter Audit Mode. You download and install VirtualPC and XP Mode, and create administrator account NetworkAdmin and standard user Office. Using sysprep you generalize the setup, make an image, and install the image to all 10 computers. Generalizing means no hardware drivers are installed; instead, they are installed when Windows is run first time in each computer.
I would recommend you to read carefully those TechNet articles on Audit Mode, links in my previous post.
Kari
Thanks for the information. I ended up with my current setup just using some registry edits to HKCU to customize a bit. I really would like to learn how to use sysprep to generalize, but was kind of short on time. Everytime I try to do it, it ends up being more complicated than I thought!
Kari, I've already used your Tutorial to create my Images and love it! To bad Windows 7 is coming to an end because this is a tool I've only learned how to use recently.
I have an old Windows 7 laptop I want to use for my sysprep image. The only spare drive I have lying around is SLOW SATA 1.5. I like things to go a little faster no matter what I'm doing. So my question is: Can I use an SSD to do this and use that image as usual, for an HDD etc.? SSD's are cheap right now so thought I would use one for this project.
I have an image from another computer but used that pc for something else recently, and the Image is getting old.
Thanks, Nasty
Nasty, despite Trim, a 2.5" SSD is seen by BIOS and Windows as a HDD.
As your SATA is old (150MB/s) it wont take full advantage of SSD speed (SATA 600). It will run around 150MB/s, but will be more or less 2 times faster than old HDD.
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