How to use sysprep to automate mini setup

This all really su After you sysprep the ghost image you are required to put back in the windows product key, which we are using our Site key, which the default image from Dell will not take. Starrdaark 2 Bronze. Post Reply. Top Contributor. Dell Support Resources. Latest Solutions. Can't find what you're looking for? You can post your question in our community. This tool comes with an easy-to-understand GUI, which can lead you to create and deploy system to unlimited computers over network simultaneously.

With it, you can complete the whole process in one place securely. It works with Windows 11, 10, 8. Here's a free trial for you:. Make sure that all the required computers are on the same network, and all client computers support PXE boot if not, exclude it please.

The disk sequence numbers for storing system in target computers must be the same. Move out other disks and only keep the destination disk.

Then go to Tools tab to create bootable media. This step is to remove SID and avoid related issues after deployment. Click OK and the computer will shutdown automatically. Then you can go to Tools tab, choose Image Deploy Tool to deploy the system image you just created.

When the tool shows "The service has started, waiting for connect If all the settings are correct, they should boot into AID recovery environment, otherwise you can enter BIOS to set the network boot as the first boot option.

Here you can see the status for all client computers. Once a computer connects to AID successfully, you will get "Client computers connected". When all the client computers are ready, check I confirm all the Here comes the guide for deploy configuration. Coding the answer file Now that you know a little about where to go for more information, let's look at the basics of the Sysprep.

As I mentioned earlier, the first thing that the Mini Setup Wizard attempts to do is display a welcome screen and an end user license agreement. Even though you don't actually have to fill in any information on these screens, you do have to click the mouse to bypass the welcome screen and to accept the license agreement.

While this may not sound like a big deal, it can be a nuisance if you have a lot of computers to configure. Therefore, I recommend configuring your Sysprep. To do so, start the Sysprep. In this code segment, the UnattendedMode key tells Windows to run Setup in full unattended mode.

This means that Setup won't pause for anything, including errors. This line is optional, but it's a good idea to use it if you have a lot of machines to set up and you don't want to have to worry about checking up on them. Before I go any further, it's important to point out that the file I'm showing you how to create is intended only for brand-new PCs that don't contain an operating system. If you need to upgrade from another operating system, such as Windows NT or Windows 9x, there will be other tasks that you'll need to complete before addressing any of the questions the Mini Setup Wizard asks.

These tasks include setting a page file size, upgrading the hard disk's partitions to NTFS, and extending the partition, if necessary among many others. In part three, I'll explain some other things you'll need to do when upgrading another operating system. For now, though, I'll assume that you're setting up a new PC.

With that said, here are some more commands you might include in your Sysprep. Notice that each of the commands addresses one of the Setup questions I mentioned earlier. First, I've used the AdminPassword command to specify an administrative password. This line only works if the administrative password was blank on the system that you used to create the master image file. I should also mention that even though this password only applies to the local system this command doesn't affect the domain administrator's password , you might consider omitting the line and setting the password manually.

Your password appears as readable text within your Sysprep. Anyone who happens to get access to a copy of this file can easily find out the administrative password used on all of the workstations. The next command in this section is the TimeZone command. In this example, I've set the time zone to 35, which corresponds to the East Coast of the United States.

The code for the West Coast is four. If you live in the United States, you can use 10 for Mountain time and 20 for Central time. If you need other time zone codes, you can find them in the Unattended. You'll notice that both of these commands have a value of 1. A value of 1 is equivalent to Yes, while a value of 0 is equal to No.

Likewise, the OemSkipRegional command tells Windows to skip the portion of the Mini Setup Wizard that deals with the regional settings. The next section you'll encounter is the User Data section. This section provides the data for customizing the new system with things like a user name and computer name.