Hi,

yes you can use Ghost and save your image to Network Drive or DAT tape or
burn it to CD/DVD.

Regarding SIDs you can use utility called sysprep.exe. You can find it on
WinXP CD <CD DRIVE LETTER>:\SUPPORT\TOOLS\ inside DEPLOY.CAB file.

You run sysprep on your WinXP PC after you set up everything as you like
(all applications etc...). After sysprep is done, you shut down PC and save
the image of the disk (using e.g. Ghost).
When you first reboot after you restored the image on one of your PCs you
will get mini setup wizard that will ask you for Your Name, Company name,
Computer name and Serial No. of your WinXP. You can also automate this part
of installation.

Inside deploy.cab file is also deptoool.chm and unattend.doc. This two
documents (help files) go in depth how to create unatendent installation.

--
Mike
MCSA 2K, MCSE 2K, MCT, ...

"Iskandar Taib" <ntaib@alumni.indiana.edu> wrote in message
news:9ce84e0e.0307162146.7d5919bb@posting.google.c om...
> I've got 100 machines running XP Pro in a student lab. At this point
> in time, I'm waiting for my Domain Controllers to arrive, so we've got
> things set up pretty simply (local accounts, workgroup), and I'm
> looking at various options for when they do arrive. Unfortunately,
> it's been a while since I've done this sort of thing.
>
> What's the best way of cloning the setup of one machine, after we've
> installed all the software? Installing and testing a couple dozen odd
> pieces of chemistry/physics/biology freeware, not to mention Office,
> Acrobat Reader, etc. on a hundred machines is going to be a royal pain
> in the neck. Ideally I'd like to have all this stuff stored on a
> server, but we still need to replicate the basic setup on the one
> hundred machines.
>
> Will Ghost do this? I seem to recall something in my NT Admin classes
> about each machine having a distinct SID, which is necessary in a
> Domain. Not to mention the XP activation issue (though I think that
> might not apply to us, since the vendor installed XP en-masse). Or is
> there something built in in Windows Server 2003 that will do this? A
> way to automatically/unattendedly rebuild machines after the students
> have finished messing with them once a week would be nice, too.
>
> Thanks!