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How to make and deploy Win7 image via USB

Thread needs solution

I have 100 Dell laptops of the same model and specs.

I want to install one of them with the correct Windows 7 and drivers and Office and then make an exact image and be able to deploy that image to the other laptops vis USB thumbdrives.

Can I accomplish this using True Image 2015? Or does anyone know of an easy to use program that would do this for me?

Thanks

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Welcome to these user forums.

From your initial description of what you are wanting to achieve, it suggests that you are doing this as a business, and if so, using an old product such as ATIH 2015 is probably not the best place to start from.

In principle you could try to do what you are saying, but you also need to be aware that Acronis True Image is aimed at the Home market / Home user base, not intended for use in a business scenario as you are suggesting, and any deployment would require a good deal of manual intervention and could not be automated using this product.

If there are any significant hardware differences in the 100 Dell laptops, even though they are stated as being the same model and specs, then you may also need to use the Acronis Universal Restore utility to overcome those differences.

I would suggest opening a diaglogue directly with Acronis sales who should be better placed to advise you about their other business products which may be better suited to this task, such as their Snap Deploy product?

Thanks for the response. 

It's actually not for business use. I happened upon these laptops (which were headed for the scrap heap) and decided to give them new life and donate them. 

After doing a lot more research I found the solution using Clonezilla. I'm loading up 10 units at a time and will have them all done by the weekend.

It's possible I could have figured it out using the Acronis version I have, but my support ended in 2015 and they wanted to charge me for tech help.

It's still a great product for what I use it for.

Thanks again

Glad to hear that you have found a solution that works for you with Clonezilla.

So, just curious, but where'd you get 100 Windows licenses for each of those computers.  Unless you have the original OEM keys, chances are, they won't register and if they do, using that one key from your image, there's a good chance you'll lock that key out for registering it so many times to different motherboards.

Good deal.  You'll have to handjam those in after each restore since Win 7 requires the key during installation - meaning that you'll have the same key in each deployment of that image.  

Alternatively, you run sysprep "out of the box" and shutdown immediately.  Then take an offline image and deploy that image to each machine, but you'll still have to hand jam each key in after that. 

Hopefully, you wont' have to call Microsoft to register some of them.