Need to push a new image to multiple computers
Alright here is what we are trying to do. We have a couple hundred computers we need to downgrade from Win7 enterprise to professional. We need to keep the users existing profiles on almost all of these computers. We have the Dell K1000 and K2000 appliances as well. We are thinking of trying to accomplish this something like this:
We want to run a script that will create a new partition on the drive, push the image to that partition, change the boot.ini to include the new image, use USMT to capture the profiles of the original image and import into the new image.
We want to do something like this so incase something happens we do not lose the original profiles of that computer. We are doing about 70% of these at remote locations and cannot send down manager. We want to test at our main location until it is perfected the best that it can be.
Any thoughts or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
Answers (1)
You must have a lot of extra disk space on these. I would use the second partition for backup purposes and reimage over the 1st so your systems are then "typical" and when you research for answers you do not have to convert the solution to the setup you created. Also when you are happy with the conversion you can nuke the 2nd partition and join to the 1st if you want.
I would create a 2nd partition and pull a mig to that partition and if you have enough space do a system image also so you could either restore just the profiles or the entire partition intact if things go wrong. Putting the mig on the second partition would be good since every machine would have the same name for the mig file you can use a script to restore the migs universally.
you could either run the usmt from a share or copy it to the second partition so you can use it to get and put the mig files.
use a kscript like this to acquire
d:\usmt\amd64\scanstate d:\usmt\migstore /i:d:\usmt\amd64\migapp.xml /i:d:\usmt\amd64\miguser.xml /l:d:\usmt\migstore\mig.log /o /v:5 /uel:120
and this to put back
d:\usmt\amd64\loadstate d:\usmt\migstore /i:d:\usmt\amd64\migapp.xml /i:d:\usmt\amd64\miguser.xml /l:d:\usmt\migstore\mig.log /v:5 /uel:120
system image info
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/what-is-a-system-image
http://sourcedaddy.com/windows-7/how-start-system-image-backup-from-the-command-line.html
I would do all this from the k1000 then you can create a couple of custom software inventories to see the mig and image files to verify they exist prior to reimaging with the k2000. you could always put the mig file back by using the above line in a post task.
Comments:
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Thanks for the info, sounds like that could work. We will give it a shot and see how it goes. Thanks again! - jay.moore 9 years ago
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I use the create system image for my masters to make a backup prior to sysprep. Then I can restore that image in about 15 minutes via the windows boot dvd - repair options. it comes back totally intact with this method. I do updates, make a new backup, sysprep and have a current image.
You can use the k2000 to capture the usmt but with that many you could fill the hdd up on the kbox plus it makes it harder to know who owns what one vs having it on each machine. I also use a get mig kscript that will create a directory on a server share and dump it there.
net use v: \\dr-main\images /user:admn\user password
v:
cd usmt
md %COMPUTERNAME%
v:\usmt\x86\scanstate v:\usmt\%COMPUTERNAME% /i:v:\usmt\x86\migapp.xml /i:v:\usmt\x86\miguser.xml /l:v:\usmt\%COMPUTERNAME%\mig.log /o /v:5 /uel:120 /ui:admn\* - SMal.tmcc 9 years ago -
if you get stuck create more posts or you can find my email under my profile if you need more detailed/private communications - SMal.tmcc 9 years ago
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Will do thanks! - jay.moore 9 years ago
