I am looking for a simple way of updating over 1000 XP POS terminals in a restaurant without having to manually change each terminal. My question is this, if I successfully make changes concerning both permissions and registry changes on a single terminal, and then export the registry and save it to a Thumb Drive, and then iimport that registry file into the other terminals, will this update the permissions and registry changes on all the subsequent machines, without having to do them one by one? If so, is there any easier way to do this that any one can think of? Is there away of converting the exported registry file into a group policy which I can then push to each of these terminals? Finally, before any of these changes become effective, the terminals need to join the same domain, it this action captured in the registry also?

Are you able to create an image on 1 working POS and then have each machine update that way?

Permissions can be set by GPO add-ins. HP has a nice GPO snap-in to help with a lot of things as well.

Its hard to determine what you will be capable of without a little more detail. Registry settings are not easily changed - each machine still needs to reboot. It is possible though that if you create a working image you can image from CD or ceate a RIS (Remote Installation Server) and have the XP POS machines boot to a network to download and install an image. Takes about 10-15 minutes on a PC over LAN.