Use RIS. This is a great option if your workstations are not customized to
the nth degree. What I have done at my clients with more than 30 PCs is
setup RIS, roaming profiles and redirected folders (I redirect My Documents
and the desktop). They have open licensing for both Windows and Office so I
have one key for each product. If a workstation takes a flying leap for who
knows what reason, I just RIS it, Office Installs via a GPO, and the user is
ready to log in. When they log in, they have all their office apps, their
profile they had before, all their documents and their desktop. I then
install whatever other software they had other than MS Office.
If you cannot completely rebuild your workstations, RIS is not an option. I
would get an XP CD, copy it to your hard drive, create your unattend.txt
file and customize with things such as whether you want to upgrade or do a
complete install. I do not have experience with this, but I know it is an
option. Done right, this option is great. You can then create your CD,
making sure you make it bootable. There are instructions all over the
internet for creating bootable Windows Install CDs.
In both of these options, make sure you have open licenses. This is easy to
keep track. If you go retail box, each box will have a key and you must
keep that key with the computer you install it on. You cannot put a key in
the .sif file for RIS and in the unattend.txt file for an automated CD
install.
Either solution, I would recommend downloading the Windows XP SP1 Deployment
Tools at:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...3d-507b-4095-9d9d-0a195f7b5f69&DisplayLang=en
This will give you a lot of insight about deploying Windows XP. With more
than 20 or 30 computers, I would start looking at deployment options. Not
just for initial deployment, but for the future ease of rebuilding a
workstation.
Jeremy
