Outsource bootable XP disc creation?

Question

First of all, apologies if this question is in the wrong place.

We have around 30 workstations all with the same software installed. They all run Windows XP Professional SP3 with their own license keys. Each computer is named at random - something similar to:

companyname-123hb2

It's becoming increasingly often that I need to re purpose computers and move them around. I am also slowly increasing the number of workstations in the building. When I do either of these tasks I have to run through the same process on each of the machines.

1. Install Windows XP Professional
2. Upgrade Windows to the latest version with all hotfixes etc.
3. Install Group Policy Preferences
4. Install AVG Anti-Virus
5. Install AniTa (Terminal Emulator) and configure
6. Install Microsoft Office 2003
7. Install Oracle software (for accessing encrypted documents from a vendor)
8. Install Adobe PDF Reader
9. Set the static IP of the workstation
10. Link the workstation to the domain

Ideally, I would like to merge steps 1-7 into one step (obviously the updates will never be the most up to date) and then it's a case of customising the workstation rather than setting it up.

Every time I have come to set something like this up I have hit issues with the software slipstreaming etc.

I was wondering if anyone knew of a company or organisation that offer this kind of thing as a service. So the ideal outcome would be an installation disc with all of the above included that prompts for the computer name, windows xp serial key and possibly domain.

Answer 1

I don't know of any specific companies that will create slipstreamed media for you, and it's entirely possible that doing so would be legally difficult.

However, there are a number of programs that will generate slipstreamed install CDs with extra apps and the latest patches on them. You may have tried these already, but just in case, I'll give you a pointer to what is probably the oldest and most well established: nLite.

Alternatively, if you have slipstreamed OS media and want to install a number of pieces of software automatically, you should take a look at either Ninite (which is great if you're only wanting to install free software) or AllMyApps which has a wider range of software, but is in my opinion a little less user friendly.

Answer 2

This may not be what you are looking for but have you seen sccm? You can create all of your base images and push them out to your machines through pxe boot. Then you can create packages where you can basically build your entire configuration automatically.