Can you "swap" the Sysprep answer file in Windows 7

Posted by Ben on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Ben
Published on 2010-05-05T20:43:53Z Indexed on 2010/05/05 20:48 UTC
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I have a load of new Lenovo laptops which I am due to distribute in my company. We are distributed in multiple locations and I want to ship the laptops "boxed" and untouched by IT hand for distribution.

We are using LANDesk to do all the software distribution and provisioning, but are currently falling at the first hurdle as when booted, the laptops kick into the Lenovo mini-setup wizard.

I assume this is because they have been sysprepped at Lenovo. In order to keep with our (almost) zero touch strategy I want the users to PXE boot into a PE of some sort, which will run a script on startup which replaces the sysprep answer file with one of my own. (i.e. prepopulated with product key, company info etc.) and then reboot to complete Sysprep.

The plan is that this will run, and then install the LANDesk agent as a post-sysprep task, which in turn will complete the provisioning.

Anyone have any experience / know any pitfalls to look out for / can suggest a suitable, PXE-bootable PE environment?

Apologies for the verbosity of the question - it takes a bit of explaining!

Thanks in advance,

Ben

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