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Copied Factory.wim deployment on multiple machines of the same model (Optiplex 990)
Hi all,
I have 3 Optiplex 990 machines with identical hardware configs. Two of the machines had their recovery partitions overwritten during past re-installs of windows. One of the machines, however has the recovery partition intact with the Factory.wim.
I was going to copy the Factory.wim from this machine to a bootable usb drive and use that wim file to restore the other two with new hard drives. Would their be an issue doing this other than perhaps changing the restored machines to use the windows license for that machine? Would their be any SID issue doing this?
osprey4
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October 18th, 2014 06:00
Hi Bryguy21,
There are no license issues with what you want to do provided Windows is the same flavor on all of them.
osprey4
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October 19th, 2014 06:00
That is correct. The OEM install uses a generic key, not specific to that machine.
bryguy21
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October 18th, 2014 20:00
Hi Ospprey4,
Thanks for the reply. Yes all the 990's have a license for windows 7 Pro. I wasn't sure if the factory.wim would be specific to that machine regarding the windows license or the machine system identifier (SID).
It sounds like the Factory WIM is generic and I can use it to restore any optiplex 990 with the same hardware and of course the proper windows 7 license. With that said, I guess that means I wont have to re-enter the windows 7 license that's on the sticker of the 990 that I am restoring is that correct?
bryguy21
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October 20th, 2014 01:00
Thanks Osprey :emotion-1:
bryguy21
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October 21st, 2014 12:00
Hi Osprey,
I imaged the other optiplex machines and it worked perfectly with one caveat. It did set the machines with the exact same SID.
Usually Microsoft recommends using Sysprep to change the ID but thats usually a laborious process using WAIK prior to installing the image.
Do you know if there is a Dell utility or something in the rebootable install utility that can be changed to assign a new SID. I basically used the Dell Backup and Restore utility from the machine that had a good image file to create the bootable USB to restore the image.
bryguy21
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October 21st, 2014 16:00
For others who want to know. I assumed sysprep had to be used prior to creating a system image so the cloned machine is generalized with a unique ID.
You can, however use sysprep on Win 7 (which is built into win 7) to reset the SID "after" installing the restore from the image.
(For windows 7)
Open sysprep location
C:\Windows\system32\sysprep\
For the GUI run sysprep.exe
As a System Cleanup Action select Enter System Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE), select Generalize if you to change SID, and select "Reboot"
Let this run. After the machine boots up the SID should be reset.
osprey4
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October 25th, 2014 04:00
Thanks for the update. Glad that worked.