Restore cd's HP and Compaq

Our company as a matter of practice and security, reformats and reinstalls all software to the c:\ drive when an employee leaves the company. Just to make sure that personal stuff is destroyed as well as the 2000 themes that seem to end up on these machines.

We used to use a non-oem version of Windows 98, NT or 2000 rather than the disks that came with the PC.

We have at least as many OS licenses as we have PC's. (If we can count the oem software) The reason we didn't use the manufacture's version is that we could not control the partitioning of the hard drives. (Could not control size or type NTFS or FAT) The HP or Compaq OS did the fdisk so that the PC was in the original state.

Several months ago, we got a BSA, Business Software Alliance mailing that ended that practice. The HP license numbers only work with their CD's some but not all of the Compaq license numbers work with the non Compaq software.

Does anyone have a trick to control restore CD's or at least control their partitioning? There are no floppies involved.

We are now ordering all of our PC's without an OS and buying licenses in bulk (Believe it or not most of the PC's still show up with the OS installed.)

I would recommend just doing exactly what you are doing: order the computers without an OS and buy a license for each computer. Nowadays, HP doesn't even ship recovery CDs with their computers anymore (only the recover partition on the hard drive), so it shouldn't be a problem to order them without an OS pre-installed. I'm not sure, but you may be able to talk with HP/Compaq to see whether there is anything they can do for you if you are buying business computers from them... it's always worth a shot.

AJ

Once you have an image build for a particular system why not use ghost or some other third party software to images the machines. THis way you have a standard configuration which can be put on the system in the matter of minutes... I know this doesn't really answer the question but it does solve the problem of recovery CD since the image will be doing just about the same thing...

Even a computer with no OS will have a typical partition on the C: drive from the OEM, you can use Partition Commander, Partition Magic and delete the typical 36 k OEM partition, if this will not work then run the debug script on the HD do a search here it has been posted a few times. As for the BSA my feeling of this family well I think racketeering same methods gonna break your knee caps sue you pay us our protection money and we will tell you if you comply with our EULA's, sort of the same small print a loan shark uses :) in their EULA's

paldie you may or may believe this but it is the TRUTH according to Microsoft

If you want to build an image you must buy a license! Thus spoke Bill,Balmer,Gates. The OEM license don't count.

Netman has that correct, and even if using proper software to take into account different HD sizes EULA's say one cannot do this. So lets see no discount for ordering a system minus an OS so M$ still has their money there, so you go Corp License pay there, want to make a disk image you pay again. What pay 3 times for an OS sound silly scary part it is true. Like I said Bill (Vinnie) and Steve (Vetto) and the BSA will break your business knee caps unless you pay them off at every step.

Ok I got off the subject here and its my subject. Any one got a way to restore and not repartition that hard drive?

Once you have installed the OS and your chosen software,
you create a restore CD with Norton Ghost.
No matter what customization the user has done,
when the time comes,you boot the restore CD and
it goes back to your original configuration.

It is the same program that COMPAQ uses to create their
restore CDs
:cool:

http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/

Don't get me wrong, I am not suggest you prirate the software here, but it doesn't mean you have to have difference key for each installation. if you own the OEM license you own a license to the OS. It is an OEM version. Your question is in regard to recovery cd. My suggestion is to walk around the recovery cd process. You need to have license yes, I am not suggesting you image the machine without the proper licenses. But you do not need to use the recovery cds evertime you want to rebuild a users system. It is time consuming and cumbersome... rcgreen in the previous posting states the same process I was refering to... But you need to own the license...

Paldie is right, you do NOT need to use different cdkeys for each install. We use the same CD, and the same License key for each rebuild we have to do. As long as you have the correct amount of licenses (and proof of those licenses) then you're good to go.
Along with that, you could always have a generic 'Restore CD' (just the os cd) along with the answer file necessary for an unattended install. This way all machines are identical (as long as their hardware is identical) and there's not as much work when doing a rebuild. Or just go with the OS image.

This way there's very little administrative work you have to do, and there's no conflicts with licensing.

Hope this helps!

rcgreen,

Does that include that license key?

The Compaq's never ask for the key, but it is installed during the restore.

And does ghost work with 2k and xp?

Thanks

AFAIK, ghost clones the hard drive as is, and therefore,
assuming the OS was lawfully installed in the first place, the license
key was entered during installation, and is restored with the
ghost file without having to be keyed in again.

My COMPAQ came with a Norton Ghost restore disk.
If you screw up the OS, you just boot the restore
disk and everything is restored from an image file.
I did have to enter a license key for Microsoft Word,
but not for windows.

And I'd be sure that the latest edition of Ghost
could handle the latest Microsoft OS.
:cool:

Ghost will work with 2K and xp I have done it. The best practice for this is to build the system using you legal licensed software. Once you have the installation correct use MS SYSPREP utility to have the software run through the mini-installation for Plug-n-pray. This will do an auto-discovery of devices on the system and do the basics. It will not ask you for the CD-key...Is will also allow for the SID to change on the system. The biggest thing you need to worry about here is BIOS. The HAL of W2K and (I imagine) XP is a little different depending on the BIOS of the system you are installing on. If the BIOS type is the same then you can get away with ghosting the image. If it is different you will need an image for every BIOS type. But if the hardware is the same (IE the same manufaturer and make and model) then it will work. You get into flakey territory when you have PC that are build by a tier three local vendor who costom builds machines, because the motherboard just might be different. IF they are all HP or Compaq you most likely can get away with one image per model...

There is a utility Symantec has call GhostWalker. It comes with Ghost Enterprise. It allows you to manually change the SID of a system. You need to boot the system with a boot disk and run ghost walker. which will search the hard drive for the SID of the system and the change it to an new one. I haave used this to clone W2K Servers. We took an inage of the original server which was in the AD domain. We imaged to the new box (hardware was indentical) we then restarted with a boot disk after restarting. we walked the SID to a new one. restarted off the network... changed the IP address and removed it from the domain putting it in a workgroup. rebooted attached to the network with its new ip address and moved the srever into the domain... it is a sweet process.. we did this with W2K Terminal Servers RUnning Citrix MetaFrame XP and it works....

sorry for rambling, I have just used Ghost extensively and it has saved tons of time. You can even script a networkable boot disk to start the machine, load the nic in dos, bind tcp/ip to the nic, assign an IP address, attach to a network and login, map a network drive, and load an image from that network drive, and do this atuomatically. all you have to do is insert the floppy disk and start the machine.... take some work to get it running and scrippted but once it is done...imaging system is simple.....