Microsoft Windows Registry Guide, Second Edition

Keeping Perspective

In this chapter, I've given you enough information to start testing Sysprep in your lab right away. Sysprep is even a great tool for those power users who install Windows over and over again. But I haven't told you enough about Sysprep for you to build an image and start deploying it on an enterprise's desktops.

There's much more to Sysprep than just writing a few answer files and running Sysprep.exe. Considerations include everything from defining preferred configurations to licensing to whether you've configured your routers for multicast. Disk imaging is a part of an overall deployment plan, which includes hardware and software inventories, migration plans, configuration plans, and much more.

More Info

Microsoft has several resources available to help you plan large-scale deployments using disk-imaging techniques. To learn more about these important resources, contact your Microsoft account manager, who'd be happy to tell you about them. The ultimate resource for online deployment information is http://www.microsoft.com/technet/desktopdeployment/default.mspx.