Imaging Help

Have 5 new, identical PC's. Loaded one with Win Xp and all of the software and settings required. The ran SySPrep to remove the serial number and reseal, ready to be imaged and put onto all PC's. Expecting then to enter licence key on each machine when it booted.

I used the acronis boot CD to enable me to create an image of the PC before it booted back up, so still ready for serial key, pc name etc in installation mode. The image file was copied onto a removable drive, which I then used to create my master image.

Tried my first PC, botted with Acronis, then placed the image file into the CD drive, selected the image file and went throught the process og re imaging the new blank PC. Process ended with sucess and rebooted. The PC boots as far as the windows screen with progress bar, and it gets about 5 or 6 segments into the load and then reboots my PC. It will not boot into Windows via safe mode either.

Can anyone help. I am basically trying to ease the process of installing xp and other components onto 5 identical PC. Where have I gone wrong?

 

Just an aside, I was surprised to learn that this type of procedure requires a TI license for each machine which you use it on - even if you boot from a CD. This would imply that you would need 5 licenses to do what you are doing which would seem a little excessive to me.

Anyway, you say that the hardware is identical, are you sure? For example are the BIOS's configured the same. When you say you tried your "first" PC, is this the original PC which you made your image on, or is this the first "target" PC. If the latter, have you tried restoring the image to the original PC to try and determine if it is the image or the hardware which is the problem.

 

The image was not tried on the original PC. The original, when restarted, acted like a new PC, asking for serial Key etc.

Can you explain what you mean about the TI licence. Theses are PC's built up form components and have a full Windows Xp Pro licence key with each. If I had just imaged my first PC, then imaged the remaining PC's they would all have had the same Licence Key, So I used the Sysprep utility to remove the key, ready for imaging at that point. Are you saying there is a better way to do this?

I have not tried the image file back onto this PC as yet.

I will also double check the components on each PC. 4 were bought at the same time, and the fifth a couple of weeks later. Same motherboard, processor, different RAM?, same Hard Drive, Graphics. Do you think the RAM may be the cause?

Thanks for your help.

 

I don't know if this helps but here goes. The Microsoft (OOBE) wizard runs immediately after the initial installation. Its this wizard that is responsible for product activation, registration etc. If this is disabled during the initial install the transferred image will also have it disabled resulting in the behavior you are seeing.
Check out these two URL's that might help resolve this issue.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=311466
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;289657
They could help if the issue is related to a disabled OOBE (Out Of the Box Experience)
Cheers

 

No what I was saying is that a while ago Acronis stated that every separate computer you run TI on, requires a separate license. Note this does not just mean every computer which has TI installed on its hard disk, it means every separate computer which you boot up from a boot CD as well. If that is true, then what they are saying is that you would have had to have bought 5*TI licences to backup from one computer, and restore to another four computers.

This has nothing whatever to do with the Windows license key.