A question about sysprep and skiprearm

[tvrkey]

I have been getting conflicting opinions on this whenever I try to search for it on the web. I am going to be making a master image of one computer and then deploying it to roughly ~200 other systems. In my unattend.xml I have not set the option to skip rearm, because I need to make sure the image I deploy runs as OOBE for the new workstations.

If I make sure to create a pre-sysprep image and upload it to FOG, do I need to worry about setting my unattend.xml to skip rearm. I’m just trying to think in advance in case I ever need to do Windows updates on a massive scale, other software deployments, etc. - I can just install the master image on a machine, make the changes or updates I need, and then re-deploy it without ever having to worry about my sysprep count ever going over 3?

I should note the reason I would need to do it this way is because we don’t have any other sort of software deployment options at this location using AD or something like that. In the past I have been doing software installs using psexec, but I know this wouldn’t be ideal for some software packages.

[Jaymes Driver]

If you enter Audit mode and intend to sysprep, you can make all the changes you need. Then before running the sysprep command, you can upload the image to the Fog server and keep it safe and use it as a “back up” in case you need to revert to a point before you ran the generalize command.

A better solution is to build the image virtually and use snapshots and revert that way.

Either way, you will be able to make a back up before using the generalize command.

I only recommend using the skip re-arm when you are learning to set up your unattend.xml file. But then again using a snapshot, or keeping a back up on the fog server would also negate the need to skip re-arm.

Hope this helps!

Just make sure you don’t upload over top of the “Before” image O.O