Deploying Windows 7 in a unique way

[Guest bcox9]

Hello everyone I need some assistance in deploying Windows 7.

The way that my company does it now is we build a system with our enterprise edition of W7 on any new hardware we get in. For instance we have 30 new desktops in now. We then go to Backup and Restore and create a system image onto an external hard drive. Once this completes we get another system stick in the USB containing our copy of Win7 and when it loads the files to memory we select "Repair your computer". From there you can load the system image onto the new machine. Reboot, then run sysprep with OOBE to make sure the machine gets unique SID and everything else sysprep does to the machine.

My line of thinking is I want to improve upon that, now I know nothing about WAIK, but I've tried to learn it and build an unattended install. I'm just not sure if using it is what I'm wanting to do.

I would like to spend the time and effort to be able to use either a large flash drive or small external hard drive. Plug in the hard drive and power on the system and do nothing else. When I first look at that machine I want it to be completely up to date, and have a general set of applications that we use installed on it. If I can't make it to where our custom apps are installed that's fine, but I would like it to have Office installed completely up to date, and some of the system settings set to our standards.

Could someone point me in the right direction on the best way to go about getting this set up. I know there's going to be a lot of overhead on my part to get it going, but if I can create something that is flexible enough to use on different systems by changing out a particular set of drivers in the installation process then it would make the process go a lot smoother.

I'm not sure if there's anything out there that can make this idea even possible, but I figured this would be the place to ask. I just need a nudge in the right direction and I can do the research myself. However, as much detailed descriptions as I can get would be great.

 

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