Slightly Off Topic : Windows Imaging

[Alan Dayley]

Derek Neighbors said:
> I am curious what people out there are using for Windows Desktop
> Imaging.  We sadly still have about 25 windows desktops to support (we
> are halfway off the evil empire).  One issue is that Windows degrades so
> quickly that it becomes easier to re-install every few months than try
> to support the craziness that ensues.  We have been looking at something
> like Ghost, but aren't much impressed.  Someone mentioned G4U which
> looks promising, but it would be great to hear what others are using.

(Warning: have not tried this but see no reason why it would not work.)

1. Configure Windows system how you like, fresh and clean.
2. Run defrag if needed and record the amount of space actually being used.
3. Reboot to System Rescue CD (http://www.sysresccd.org/) or Knoppix or
another bootable Linux of your choice.
4. Use parted or qtparted to shrink the partition, freeing up a 500MBs or
so more than the value you recorded in step 2.
5. Establish a partition in the free space.
6. Format the partition to ext3 or some other filesystem Linux understands
but Windows does not, ie. just about anything other than FAT.
7. Mount the new partition as writable.
8. Use this dd command: "dd if=/dev/hda1
of=/new/filesystem/on/new/partition/imagefile.bin bs=1024"
Where /dev/hda1 is changed to whichever is the Windows partition.
9. You now have a file on the new partition that contains the image of the
entire Windows partition.
10. Reboot to windows and use until imaging is needed.
11. Reboot to the Linux CD, as before.
12. Mount the new partition readable but don't mount the Windows partition.
13. Use this command: "dd
if=/new/filesystem/on/new/partition/imagefile.bin of=/dev/hda1 bs=1024"
14. Reboot to fresh and clean Windows.

The advantage of this is that the contents or filesystem (such as NTFS) of
the windows partition does not matter.  You are just reading all the data
from that partition into a file.  The file is written to a partition that
Windows cannot use, therefore it is safe.

Tada!

I really need to try this sometime.  I bet it would work.  Others are
welcome to shoot holes in my theory, as always.

Alan