In my opinion, system imaging sucks, espically when you have lots of different hardware!!! In my opinion, your best option is to setup Remote Installation Services on a Windows 2003 server. If you would like an open source solutions, look into Unattended (http://unattended.sourceforge.net/). I've never used Unattended myself, but both RIS and Unattended try to acomplish the same goal. If you're dealing with a number of Windows clients, I reccomend RIS and Active Directory. Yes, it's a Microsoft centric solution, but if you know what your doing it works well and will give you minimum headaches. Both Ghost and Microsoft's documentation for RIS and system imaging pushes you tward creating, ick, images using sysprep and risprep. Ignore sysprep and risprep please! I use Ghost only for crating exact backups of machines that I'm about to reinstall, or when replacing harddrives but perserving the existing OS. (ie: bigger hard drive is needed). System imaging is great for these situations. For system installation, imaging is bad because the image contains the OS, all preinstalled software, as well as all the drivers needed for the hardware. And you need to create an image containing all that for every different piece of hardware in your enviorment. It's just a huge waste of space! And because you need to change things like the computer name, you have to walk through the Windows mini setup for every computer, manually join the computer to Active Directory, etc. etc. etc. With both RIS and Unattended, you can setup a network bootable fully unattended installtion that will work for every platform. This way, you have a single OS installation source, a single source for software installaltion, and a source for divers. The software and driver souce can be used not only for new installs, but also for installing software on machines that already have windows installed and just need updates. And with some work, you can go from bare metal to fully installed and ready with about 60 seconds of interaction with the computer. First, get the Deploy.cab that has been updated for Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005. You can find this at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=838080. The Deploy.cab included on your Windows media may be out of date. The Deploy.cab contans many helpful resources. You'll mainly be concerned with deploy.chm (Documentation, very helpful! You will be referencing this file alot), and setupmgr.exe. setupmgr.exe helps you generate an answer file to completely automate your Windows installation. Before getting to the automate step, get Windows security updates out of the way. Visit http://smithii.com/?q=node/view/12 and download the script to make slipstreaming all the Windows updates into your image really easy. The script will copy the XP install files from your Volume License CD, then start downloading all the updates, and once all the updates are downloaded it will slipstream them into the install files. Your install files are now updated with the latest updates. Now on your server, you'll use the RIS setup tool to copy this image to the RIS server. This part is fairly painless. Now for the fun stuff. Use setupmgr.exe to generate your first answer file. Select RIS, fill out infomation, etc. Once you have a .sif file, create a copy. Edit your copy with your favorite text editor. Now go back and reference deploy.chm to understand your answer file. There are a few options that you will want to add: For example, I have a unattended file for a Dell GX620. I've added the following to my [Unattended] section: [Unattended] DriverSigningPolicy = Ignore OemPreinstall=Yes OemPnpDriversPath = Drivers\GX620\Audio;\Drivers\GX620\NIC;\Drivers\GX620\Chipset OverwriteOemFilesOnUpgrade=No [GuiRunOnce] Command0=C:\Drivers\GX620\GX620.bat Read through the Unattended install section in the chm file. Look over all the options. You'll find useful stuff, and it's well worth your time. Now that you've been introduced to the unattended file a bit, you will need to go about adding drivers to your RIS image. For starters, read this KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315279/en-us You may notice I've also added other drivers paths to my unattended answer file. To do this, go to \\servername\REMINST\Setup\English\Images\ImageFolder. In ImageFolder (i386 will be in ImageFolder) create a directory named $oem$. Under $oem$, create a folder name $1. Under $1, create a folder named Drivers. Under my Drivers folder, I have a Scripts folder, and then a folder for each hardware platform I support with RIS. Currenty I'm setup for Dell GX260, GX270, GX280, and GX620. Earlier Dell Optiplex hardware is fully supported by the default drivers in Windows XP, so I also have a non machine specific install for these computers.I have a different unattended answer file for each hardware, but the only difference is the driver paths defined under [Unattended] and the Run Once script. The run once script does the finishing touches: It fires off unattened installations for Anti Virus software, Microsoft Office, Java, Citrix Client, an Intel video driver that I haven't gotten to work durring the RIS install, and probally a few things I've forgotten. Once all the installs are done, it reboots the sytem. (I disabled rebooting in any automated software installs) The simple bat script looks like this: REM Map a network drive start /wait net use I: \\server\Software "" /user:guest /persistent:no REM Install the stupid Intel Video Driver that doesn't work with RIS. start /wait %SystemDrive%\Drivers\GX620\Video\Setup.exe -32x1024x768x72 -s REM Install Office 2003 start /wait I:\MS_Office\2003\CD\setup.exe /qb- REM etc etc etc.... REM Reboot! :) %windir%\System32\shutdown.exe -r -m \\%computername% -t 60 -c "Post Install Reboot" -f This all seems like alot of work, but the end result is I turn on any computer, select the network boot option, follow a few prompts, and start the install, and walk away. From boot to install setup takes about 60 seconds, and the entire install process takes 30-90. After the 60 seconds needed to start the install, there is nothing more that needs doing. How is this not off topic? Well I mentioned Unattended as an alternative to RIS. :D I've got a number of other web links that may be helpful, though my bookmarks are totally unorganized so I just pulled the important ones. I learned all this with google and the Microsoft knowledge base searches, so everything you need is out there. Hope this was helpful... -- Andrew S. Zbikowski | http://andy.zibnet.us SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue >0; 0 rows returned