Is there a fast way to set up multiple new laptops for a business

[Page]

I pencil in a day to get one going - if 3 then still about a day but add an about 90 mins

With all the settings and everything else - software updates - software - printer drivers etc

Surely there has to a faster way

They are all set up the same except for email accounts etc

 

[karmacomputing]

Assuming your set-up is Windows based, what's generally used in this instance is whats called an Active Directory server which sits in your office (or externally) and each of your computers get their settings from there.

All computers essentially then get their settings from the one server- you can even login to any of the computers using your account and see your settings instead of someone elses (your settings follow your username/password).

It's a cost/time/benefit balance, if you've only three computers which need setting up it might cost you less time setting those up individually than setting up (or paying for) the set-up of an Avtive Directory server.

If you'd like more information on this I can ask my colleague for some recommendations (he's more versed in Windows) than I when we perform this setup for businesses.

 

[karmacomputing]

In summary- In terms of time saving, it's then much quicker to spend time putting all setting into one server than running round configuring each machine individually. But you've still got to factor in the time of getting & setting up the server of course

 

[karmacomputing]

@Page My colleague got back to me, his response was:

"Norton Ghost is great for similar machines, you basically build one, clone it and it’ll just replicate the build over many machines using the network.

But yeah Active Directory (AD) is good for software, but for building a machine you want to use Windows Deployment Services (WDS)"

 

[Page]

But what happens about the windows and other licenses

Surely they have to be different on each machine

Or can I duplicate one and then put new licenses in

 

[Sam@UTS]

Hi Page,

What KarmaComputing has mentioned is part of the solution. The other part is called Imaging, this basically means you set up one machine and then take an image of that machine to roll out on to all your new machines, before you image the machine you "sysprep" it for this imaging process which removes any uniquely identifying information, when you start up the new machine you still have to go through the normal windows startup wizard (although you can configure it so you don't) and it takes a new License key etc. This method will only work if you have licenses of the same flavour (ie you can't easily mix home and enterprise license versions as the underlying OS is quite different). The new machine then has all the software etc that you had installed on the imaged machine, most settings are carried over (but not all).

The other part of a normal business IT setup is what KarmaComputing mentioned which is a Windows Active Directory Domain. This is the part of the system that allows you to store files in a central repository, have user accounts that are stored on servers and the same on all machines and to manage the majority of settings centrally, with enforcement of those settings. For any organisation over 10 people I would strongly recommend this set up, especially if you are rolling out new machines on a regular basis. How much this would cost would depend upon the complexity of your set up and what equipment you already have, but the ballpark figure for an SME would be between £2k and £10k for everything you would need.

If you're interested in something like this then I'd be happy to have a phone call with you about it, if you'd rather just look into the imaging then I'd suggest just Googling "how to image a windows 10 computer for deployment", and know we are here if you run into trouble!

 

[Alan]

Downside of Windows. Now if you had ChromeBooks, you turn them on - that is it

 

[soundengineeruk]

It depends on what needs to be considered.

Are you doing it from

• bare - so Windows has to be installed first
• pre-installed - so Windows is installed and it is case of installing software etc..

If bare then WDS - Windows Deployment Services - is one option to where a image can be deployed to the machine. However there are pre-requisites, but there are some open source deployment services out there.

if pre-installed - https://chocolatey.org/ contains a lot of packages that could be installed by script or develop install scripts that could be executed from USB pen to set up.

But what happens about the windows and other licenses

This depends on the software installing as it could be individual or site license.

 

[Russ Michaels]

The solution depends on whether you are creating OEM systems with just Windows, and the users will be setting up everything themselves. Or if you want to pre-install software and if you want the users to be completely setup, so they just switch on and go,

I sometimes have to do this for a client, such as a whole bunch of new desktops or Laptops with Windows 10, usually, they are the same hardware.
In which case I create 1 system and then sysprep it (it is really easy honestly), and then you just copy that setup to the other systems.
In most cases I am also usually installing an SSD at the same time, so have a pile of SSD's, and just replicate the original disk over to all the others, and then stick them in the laptops.

If the systems are not the same, then you use generalize mode, which removes all the drivers from the sysprep image, so they will get installed at the first boot.

If you want all the users to be pre-setup and all the software to be pre-installed, then you can use AUDIT mode followed by OOBE (Out of box experience), but this is generally going to require all the systems have the same hardware to use the same image.

You can find instructions on how to do all of this on google.

For my home systems, I use easeus TODO backup to back everything up, which has the option to restore the backups to dissimilar hardware.
This also has the advantage that if I need a backup system or a new laptop, I can just restore my backup to that new system, and it is exactly the same as my desktop PC.

I also use SolarWinds managed backup solution for clients, which backs up locally and to the cloud, this also allows those backups to be restored to different hardware and to virtual machine images.

 

[Page]

Downside of Windows. Now if you had ChromeBooks, you turn them on - that is it

Yep but if the software needs windows - then that is what it needs

 

[Andrew_P]

Well if you have only 3 laptops, then start everything at the same time, for all 3. You run command on one, then while it's working (installing) you run the same command on another one and so on.

Overall time will be slightly longer, but not by much and definitely not 3 days.