How many sysprep's?

[xarden]

Hi. I need a quick answer to a quick question.
How many times can Windows 7 be sysprepped before it stops letting me?

Situation I'm now in:
I have 13 images for 7 departments to build in two weeks on two machines.

My process is to build a generic base image on one, sysprep it, up it to the network share as a 'Gold'.
Then I can bring that Gold image down onto the other box and work on two images at once.

Each one will need up be upped 'Gold' again to the network, then sysprepped again, then upped back as 'Prep' to be brought down to the classrooms.

I realise I'l need to make a note of which 'gold' is built on which box, so I can easily bring that gold back down to that box and work on it at a later date if needed.

So should two syspreps be fine? What is the limit?

 

[ccatlett1984]

Hi. I need a quick answer to a quick question.
How many times can Windows 7 be sysprepped before it stops letting me?

Situation I'm now in:
I have 13 images for 7 departments to build in two weeks on two machines.

My process is to build a generic base image on one, sysprep it, up it to the network share as a 'Gold'.
Then I can bring that Gold image down onto the other box and work on two images at once.

Each one will need up be upped 'Gold' again to the network, then sysprepped again, then upped back as 'Prep' to be brought down to the classrooms.

I realise I'l need to make a note of which 'gold' is built on which box, so I can easily bring that gold back down to that box and work on it at a later date if needed.

So should two syspreps be fine? What is the limit?

You do NOT have to sysprep win7

For the love of God (and your sanity) please download MDT 2010, its the microsoft toolkit for creating and deploying images. It will make your life WAY easier.
And its FREE!!!

Below are some good links.
http://www.deployvista.com/

http://www.cluberti.com/blog/2009/08/10/mdt-2010-and-deployment-from-a-usb-key/

http://www.deploymentcd.com/

 

[logicearth]

Hi. I need a quick answer to a quick question.
How many times can Windows 7 be sysprepped before it stops letting me?.....So should two syspreps be fine? What is the limit?

There is no limit.

 

[xarden]

Yes, I've got MDT2010 on one of my severs.
However, we wont be using it as our deployment solution...

Hi. I need a quick answer to a quick question.
How many times can Windows 7 be sysprepped before it stops letting me?.....So should two syspreps be fine? What is the limit?

There is no limit.

That should make it easier for me then...

 

[cluberti]

There is an actual limit to how many times you can run sysprep on an image, and it's 3 times.

 

[ccatlett1984]

There is an actual limit to how many times you can run sysprep on an image, and it's 3 times.

If you use the no rearm switch that number can be extended to 9 times.

 

[cluberti]

That is true, although that can make going back and fixing images later problematic. I still agree with you on the MDT route though - there's no need to capture a "gold" image when you can use the MDT lab to rebuild from original media, and then modify and capture that back with a new task sequence.

 

[JonM33]

How often will someone need to sysprep, really? Just make one good image and then use SCCM to push out software.

 

[xarden]

Thanks for your replies guys.
MS SCCM/MDT vs Novell Zen: The deciders have decided on Zen10. I'd prefer SCCM myself, but we have a Zen Master here who knows a bit more about them both than I do.

We have about 13 images. So I really dont want to push Adobe CS5, Visual Studio 2010, Solidworks 2010, Steam + games + SDK's, Autodesk Suite (just to name a few) to more than half of those images.

After having a look at some new processes yesterday, it appears I may have to sysprep about 3-4 times.
That should last my building process near the start of 2011 semester and any fixes/patches/new software will have to be pushed out.

Edit: Another thing, while sysprep is running and reboots first time, if I fail to capture the image before windows starts, that gold image has become useless and will need to be either sysprep'd again, or rebuilt. I'd prefer the former.

 

[xarden]

+1 more for this one.
Part of our new process to capture images is PXEboot... and my bios wasn't configged for that.

Must be friday...
Must be time for a coffee...

 

[JonM33]

Thanks for your replies guys.
MS SCCM/MDT vs Novell Zen: The deciders have decided on Zen10. I'd prefer SCCM myself, but we have a Zen Master here who knows a bit more about them both than I do.

We have about 13 images. So I really dont want to push Adobe CS5, Visual Studio 2010, Solidworks 2010, Steam + games + SDK's, Autodesk Suite (just to name a few) to more than half of those images.

After having a look at some new processes yesterday, it appears I may have to sysprep about 3-4 times.
That should last my building process near the start of 2011 semester and any fixes/patches/new software will have to be pushed out.

Edit: Another thing, while sysprep is running and reboots first time, if I fail to capture the image before windows starts, that gold image has become useless and will need to be either sysprep'd again, or rebuilt. I'd prefer the former.

13 images? How are you organizing them? A single image should work across all of your computers. Packing all that software into an image makes a considerable image size and I'd hate to see the licensing costs.

 

[PhreePhly]

Thanks for your replies guys.
MS SCCM/MDT vs Novell Zen: The deciders have decided on Zen10. I'd prefer SCCM myself, but we have a Zen Master here who knows a bit more about them both than I do.

We have about 13 images. So I really dont want to push Adobe CS5, Visual Studio 2010, Solidworks 2010, Steam + games + SDK's, Autodesk Suite (just to name a few) to more than half of those images.

After having a look at some new processes yesterday, it appears I may have to sysprep about 3-4 times.
That should last my building process near the start of 2011 semester and any fixes/patches/new software will have to be pushed out.

Edit: Another thing, while sysprep is running and reboots first time, if I fail to capture the image before windows starts, that gold image has become useless and will need to be either sysprep'd again, or rebuilt. I'd prefer the former.

My condolences regarding using Zen. We are stuck using here and it is an absolute resource hog. Part of that is most likely poor scricpting by our Zen Master, but most of it is simply the crappiness that is Novell Engineering.

Our new CIO should hopefully relieve us of all Novell (Client, Zen and Groupwise) software by the end of the year.

 

[xarden]

@JonM33, Yes. 13.
Our Arts and Design have 6. Each one may be in 1 lab, or up to 3. Just so they can have all their digital art production tools, and another lab have different software for Fashion design, etc etc.
School of engineering have their image, loaded with solidworks and altium. Stuff that only they need.
So Autodesk is only going to certain people, as is CS5, and all the other expensive tools go to whomever.
I dont work with the licensing costs, but a ballpark figure is around $1.5M per year.

Its all organised simply in folders.
I currently have a network share, with 14 folders. One for each image, plus an archive of previous years. Each folder then has subfolders (Gold, Beta, Beta2, Platinum) which contain the actual ghost image files. Sometimes more for backups... of course. Our platinums are the sysprepped images ready to be deployed to the labs.

@PhreePhly:
I've never used Zen.
I've disliked Novell since I was a lad in highschool, probably due to your reasons too.
But we have more certified Novell guys than we do Microsoft guys, so for the imaging and deployment way, this is how its going to go.

We have a couple Linux servers, but everything else is all Microsoft.

 

[ccatlett1984]

Thanks for your replies guys.
MS SCCM/MDT vs Novell Zen: The deciders have decided on Zen10. I'd prefer SCCM myself, but we have a Zen Master here who knows a bit more about them both than I do.

We have about 13 images. So I really dont want to push Adobe CS5, Visual Studio 2010, Solidworks 2010, Steam + games + SDK's, Autodesk Suite (just to name a few) to more than half of those images.

After having a look at some new processes yesterday, it appears I may have to sysprep about 3-4 times.
That should last my building process near the start of 2011 semester and any fixes/patches/new software will have to be pushed out.

Edit: Another thing, while sysprep is running and reboots first time, if I fail to capture the image before windows starts, that gold image has become useless and will need to be either sysprep'd again, or rebuilt. I'd prefer the former.

My condolences regarding using Zen. We are stuck using here and it is an absolute resource hog. Part of that is most likely poor scricpting by our Zen Master, but most of it is simply the crappiness that is Novell Engineering.

Our new CIO should hopefully relieve us of all Novell (Client, Zen and Groupwise) software by the end of the year.

I agree on the novell statement. At least one good thing is that zen10 forces AD, edirectory is finally dead.