Nelson Witten wrote: > Hello - > > I recently got the unattended system going in a lab to test it out. > The only downside I see with the project is the length of time it > takes to install the OS and applications. For my situation it takes > just about 3 1/2 hours to install Windows XP, Office, hotfixes, and a > few other applications. In 3 hours I can build 2 machines by hand. > How can I expect a user to wait 3 hours while their machine is > rebuilt? This doesn't seem reasonable. Comparatively I can use our > RIS system or use RIPREP images and rebuild a system in about an hour. > > Is there something I can do to speed things up with this system? Does > it take everyone who uses this system this long to build machines? > > Thanks, > Nelson W.
No it doesn't usually... Last friday I installed two new Dell laptops simultaneously (1.7Ghz, 1GB and 512MB RAM) in about 2.5 hours. I could have done a couple of more in in the same time if needed. The installations included WinXP SP2, all the hotfixes with their reboots, about 14 smaller software (not possible with RIS as far as I know, we have a minimum of MS software in use), OpenOffice 2, MS Office with all the updates, a bunch of tweaks I like to use, a defrag and finally F-Secure manually. The good part? I can maybe install a laptop or two manually in that time if I try very hard, but instead of endlessly clicking "next" I was free to do a lot of other things during those 2.5 hours while the computers install themselves. Imaging IS always faster like someone else already pointed out, but only reasonable if you have a huge amount of exactly similar computers you need to rebuild often... Imagine having to make a new image of every 12 different machine types you have everytime a new Firefox version comes out, yech, only reasonable in huge corporate environment. I was using a 100MB network, but I have 1GB one if I need thanks to the nice network admin sitting next to me, if the hardware just supports it. Sounds like either you have a very slow network and/or the machines you rebuilt are old and slow, or something else is broken. And even if it takes 3 1/2 hours, you still save that time to something usefull while the computer installs itself. Funny sidenote: I used to work for a huge multinational and they naturally used imaging for reinstalls. I can actually install almost any of our employees a new operating system with unattended faster, than I could in that big corp with their images... ps. anyone found a way to install Visual Studio .NET 2003 with unattended, or is there already a script in the cvs/wiki somewhere I just haven't noticed? -- Artturi Kyrömies ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid3432&bid#0486&dat1642 _______________________________________________ unattended-info mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
