Systems Deployment

I have used both, but prefer the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT 2008\2010).
It's free, and does everything the other ones do.

It uses Imagex for doing the captures and handles drivers\hals etc really well (and is really well documented).

ORIGINAL: DeployTech

I have used both, but prefer the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT 2008\2010).
It's free, and does everything the other ones do.

It uses Imagex for doing the captures and handles drivers\hals etc really well (and is really well documented).


Is it easy to get up and running from scratch - have zero experience with it ?
How fast will it image a pc then ?

it's pretty quick to set up, uses WDS from Windows to stage WinPE and then deploys via task sequences.

Speed depends on how much you include in the build, but it's pretty quick.

Just google for MDT 2008, there's a ton of setup guides.

I have used Ghost and Acronis, and well... WIM rocks... use it, it is FREEEEE (and easy), good for images and backups.

Ghost is a solid product, and I still use it for some things, but there are many other options included in the KBOX Deployment product. I've been a Kace customer for 5 years and I can say that I get much more ROI from their products than I ever did with Ghost. Notable features include the ability to migrate user states and update images without rebuilding the entire image. Those two alone have saved me many hours.

I'm trying to upgrade some windows 2000 laptops to newer hardware. Installing all the apps again would be difficult.

We normally use Ghost but, of course, you cant restore to newer hardware. We just bought Acronis which claims to be able to allow this.

Problem I'm getting now though is that the old laptops were ACPI compliant but the new ones are not. This means the old HAL is an ACPI one and it wont work in the new one.

Never heard of MDT before but I notice the current version does not support Windows 2000. Is there a previous version that does?

Why are you keeping Win2k on the new hardware? Can you find 2k drivers for new hardware???
I think your problem is Win2k not tools. Are you capturing settings... installing software... ? Those things can be done without imaging.

MDT 2009 does support going from Win2k to a new OS or putting a Win2k wim back on to the same hardware.

BDD 2007 (the thing that came before MDT 2008\2010 supports windows 2000).....

You should have a look at Windows 7 and the compatibility mode stuff for applications, or maybe a virtualisation solution for the app (like App-V or MED-V )..

No reason for users to suffer with Win2K, if there are other options available...