Duplicate Windows XP installation using Sysprep

published by webmaster on Fri, 03/08/2013 - 17:44

If you have several identical computers and you want to install the same configuration of operating system and the same applications, you can make it easy by Sysprep tool from Microsoft. Just prepare master Windows installation, sysprep it and make a disk image. You can simply clone it to other computers.
This article is about cloning XP version of Windows.

Why use Sysprep

You cannot just duplicate Windows installation to another computer, because each Windows installation has unique SID (system ID). Sysprep can help you to distribute one image to other computers with creating new SID for each computer.

Install Windows

Install Windows XP on master computer. It is good to select computer with smallest hard drive, because when cloning to other computers, it is possible to duplicate to bigger HDD, not oposite way. If you can not use small hard drive, create small partition and clone partition only. Computer must be in workgroup - domain computer cannot be sysprep duplicated.

Check Windows installation

Be sure that the master installation is correct.

Drivers for hardware devices

Check in Device manager (Control panel \ System \ Hardware tab \ Device manager), that all drivers are installed correctly and all devices are working. You can update drivers by using Windows Update or by other tools from HW manufacturers. HP offers SoftPaq Download Manager - software that downloads and installs necessary and recommended drivers automatically (Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 is required to run this software).
If you do not have identical hard drives and hard drive controllers, then uninstall hardware specific drivers for hard drive and controllers and install standard Microsoft ones.

Operating system consistency

Unistall all unwanted applications and Windows components (for example Outlook Express).
Run Windows Update to have operating system up-to-date.
You can check Windows installation also by System File Checker (run "sfc /scannow" in command prompt).

Check disk

It is very recommended to check the disk state before creating its image. Run Chkdsk command with Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors options. If restart is required, the check disk is run after boot. Find result then in Winlogon event in Applications category in Event viewer.

Get drivers for other computers

Automated installation uses PNP (plug-and-play) drivers located in original Windows installation disk for installing plug-and-play devices. Drivers not included in original installation disk must be manually added to be ready during automated installation.

Download other drivers

Check hardware of destination computers and download related drivers.

Prepare drivers

Copy (copy and extract) drivers into C:\Drivers folders like "C:\Drivers\1", "C:\Drivers\2" etc.

Syspreping

Find all important information about Sysprep tool in deploy.chm Windows help file in Deploy.cab.

Make Sysprep folder

Create folder C:\Sysprep and copy content of the Deploy.cab file from your Windows XP installation disk to the folder. You can find the Deploy.cab file in \Support\Tools\ folder in the Windows installation CD. The most important files are sysprep.exe and setupcl.exe. This folder and its content will be deleted after installation of the syspreped image.
Copy i386 folder including hidden files from Windows XP installation disk to C:\Sysprep folder.

Using Setup manager for creating sysprep.inf

Run setupmgr.exe from C:\Sysprep folder to prepare easy startup version of sysprep.inf. Sysprep.inf is for skipping entering the same information or configuring the same options during installation on destination computers.

Customize sysprep.inf

Add to [Unattended] section:
OemPnPDriversPath="Drivers\1;Drivers\2" (folders of drivers not present in original installation CD)
ExtendOEMPartition=1 (automatically extend master image disk to destination hard drive space if destination computer hard drive is bigger then master computer hard drive)
Add to [Sysprep] section:
BuildMassStorageSection=Yes
Comment in [UserData] section:
; ProductKey=12345-67890-12345-67890-12345

Run Sysprep

This is final step of the whole sysprep process. Close all programs and in command propt go to C:\Sysprep folder. Run sysprep.exe (please find more information about Sysprep modes and standardizing hard drive controllers for successfull duplication on different hardware configuration of destination computers). Use Reseal (3rd button from top) in our example. After finishing this operation, sysprep.exe shuts down computer. Clone image of hard drive to duplicate it.

Duplication

Creating master image

I use Clonezilla, free tool, to create image of the hard drive. Beginners mode for creating disk to image of whole hard drive is easy way from my point of view or creating image of small partition if you want to clone to computers with smaller hard drives.
How? Create bootable CD from Clonezilla ISO image, boot the syspreped computer from the Clonezilla CD and create an image.