Best way to Deploy 50 new XP PC's

[Cryptographic_ICE]

I work at the helpdesk for a company that just purchased 50 new PC's.
I think our current method is quite involved / cumbersome and possibly
out of date. I'm wondering how other people are handling this. We are
on a Windows Server 2003 Domain. Here is our current strategy.

1. The computer is Wiped and a single NTFS partition is created.

2. Using Drive Image XML (http://www.runtime.org) we push a base image
to the PC that contains Windows XP and some basic programs (Antivirus,
Updates)

3. We change the computer name, reboot and join it to the domain.

4. We (by hand) copy all of the users data on the old pc to a network
share (email signature, desktop items, IE favorites, so on)

5. We have the user login to the PC to create a profile

6. We install any special applications for that person or department.

7. We (by hand) copy all of the data from the network share back to
its proper location on the new PC.

8. We setup the appropriate network printers for that department.

Some challenges that we have with this procedure are:

1. The base image is out of date. After imaging a machine I need to
apply 60+ windows updates

2. Copying files by hand is not only time consuming but results in at
least 1 helpdesk call where we forgot something or the user can't find
it.

3. We have a nice SMS server that goes unused.

I'm thinking of using the User State Migration Tool does any one have
experience with that? Does it work well?

 

[Chase]

Wow thats quite the process!

I would suggest the following:

Ditch the entire imaging process you currently use and move to Windows
Deployment Services. It's fast, efficent, and very easy to update. Sysprep is
also a very easy way to automate some of your tasks, such as adding it to the
domain and naming it. Granted you will want to name each machine
individually, so you would want the image to prompt you for that, but
services and domain add can be automated. In all honesty, once the system is
up and running - repurposing machine will be a breeze. Boot, load, done.

The program installations for special products we do by hand as well, but
licenses can be an issue, so we can't get around that part.

Coping user files though, my goodness you should not be doing that by hand
anymore! I use USMT, and it works fantastic. We use local personal network
drives at my company, so in order to have USMT work effectivly with minimal
effort I created a script that detects who the user is, where they are, and
where it should place the file. You can change what files and folders USMT
copies, but essentially it does exactly what you are doing by hand -
automatically.

So essentially we deploy USMT on each machine, when upgrades come around we
ask the user to run the scan script. It does all the leg work for you, and
the user gets to decide when the best time for them to run it is - which is a
fantastic convience.

We have our new machines come reimaged directly from Dell. I setup a special
image for each flavor and shipped it to them for their CFI imaging process.
Basically, they take my image and put it on the machines before they ship it.
So the machines already deployable the moment we get it. From there, you only
need to name it and give it to the user.

They log in and then run the load state script - it takes all those files
and settings and puts them on the new machine (Such as outlook settings, icon
and folder view settings). The entire process can vary based on the users
profile size, but it works wonders and it keeps our hands clean.

Long winded post, long story short.

Move to WDS - update your image and sysprep to a point where all you are
prompted to do is pick the image you want, and name the PC.

Start using USMT - if you use network drives its very easy to create an
interactive script that will run all the commands and checks automatically.