First time user of Clonezilla Live. I recently imaged a Windows XP sp3 machine without initially using sysprep (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;302577) before booting into Clonezilla. I was wondering if my lack of using sysprep will pose a problem when I try to restore the image in the future on the same hardware? My intention was to use the image only as a system back-up so that I won't have to reinstall certain applications (MS Office, etc) and re-register them. Wasn't planning on using the image to deploying it on other machines with different hardware configurations. Thanks in-advance for your help.
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if you restore the image to the very same machine that was imaged, then, no, there's no problem at all.
But, if
1. you restore to another PC with the same hardware
AND
2. that PC is in the same network as the one that was imaged at first
AND
3. your network is a WorkGroup (domains are not concerned)
then you might be in trouble.
This is because MS-Windows is using a Security IDentifyer (SID) to identify each machine in a workgroup; this SID has then to be unique. You understand that cloning a machine to another you'll end up having two machines with the same SID, which would potentially bring problems.
For more information, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897418.aspx.
In this situation you can, in order of preference:
a. Use SysPrep which will take care of creating a new SID at startup
b. Use NewSID (see above link) that can change to a new SID (but that can sometimes bring some naughty side effects)
HTH,
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
First time user of Clonezilla Live. I recently imaged a Windows XP sp3 machine without initially using sysprep (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;302577) before booting into Clonezilla. I was wondering if my lack of using sysprep will pose a problem when I try to restore the image in the future on the same hardware? My intention was to use the image only as a system back-up so that I won't have to reinstall certain applications (MS Office, etc) and re-register them. Wasn't planning on using the image to deploying it on other machines with different hardware configurations. Thanks in-advance for your help.
twesnick,
if you restore the image to the very same machine that was imaged, then, no, there's no problem at all.
But, if
1. you restore to another PC with the same hardware
AND
2. that PC is in the same network as the one that was imaged at first
AND
3. your network is a WorkGroup (domains are not concerned)
then you might be in trouble.
This is because MS-Windows is using a Security IDentifyer (SID) to identify each machine in a workgroup; this SID has then to be unique. You understand that cloning a machine to another you'll end up having two machines with the same SID, which would potentially bring problems.
For more information, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897418.aspx.
In this situation you can, in order of preference:
a. Use SysPrep which will take care of creating a new SID at startup
b. Use NewSID (see above link) that can change to a new SID (but that can sometimes bring some naughty side effects)
HTH,
Thank-you Jean for the help and clarification. Much appreciated!!