Deploying Windows 7 image including drivers onto multiple computers

marcbobrien · Jan 18, 2014

OK.. So I've bought 100 refurbished laptops to sell on. They came with formatted hard drives, so I've spent half a day installing/updating Windows & necessary hardware drivers, etc.

As all the laptops are identical, I now want to image/clone the machine I've finished onto all the others.

My questions are..

Can I use regular imaging software for this?

If so, what's the best free software to use?

Can I create a bootable disc containing everything?

How does this work with Windows product keys (that part I don't want cloned as I have a separate key for each one)?

Appreciate any help/advice. Gonna take me years if I have to install/update all the machines individually!!

mbreslin1954 · Jan 18, 2014

Since it's what I normally use for myself, I would use True Image 2013 or True Image 2014. You can usually get it on sale for $19.99 if you look for it and wait. There are others that are free, but I haven't used them. Since I use it for image backups, I can't take chances and must have something I can depend on, and True Image has rarely let me down.

I would install Windows 7 on one machine, let it patch itself, but do not supply the license key. You should be able to install it without providing a key and it will run for 30 days. Then install your imaging program and make an image of the system drive. Then you can use the imaging-software-provided boot disk to restore the image to each PC, and provide the license key for each PC and activate them one at a time.

EDIT: Of course you would make your first system image to an external hard drive, and use that to Restore the image to all the other PCs.

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Deploying Windows 7 image including drivers onto multiple computers

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