CareerFruits

You reimage PCs as they come in from your hardware vendors and support end user issues. You might even have a pretty quick approach to reimaging and swapping hard drives with fresh copies of Windows. If this sounds like you, here are the top 7 reasons to rethink your deployment approach for Windows 7:

1. Windows 7 is delivered as a system-prepared and file-based image itself. It is designed to install on most common hardware platforms using the same image.

2. Windows 7 is architected in a way that enables you to get to a single system image to manage, regardless of the hardware you plan to reinstall it on.

3. Windows 7 includes the System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) as an in-box executable and can be used to prepare a custom installation of Windows including your applications for redeployment.

4. Windows 7 images can be captured, mounted and applied using a free command line tool included in the Windows Automated Installation Kit called ImageX and they can be audited/edited offline using the Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) command line tool.

5. Windows 7 custom images are often 5GB or larger, but they can be efficiently deployed over the network using Multicast Multiple Stream Transfer in Windows Server 2008 R2’s Windows Deployment Services role.

6. Windows 7 and the User State Migration Tool introduce hard-link migration to quickly migrate user files and settings in-place when moving the same PC from Windows XP or Windows Vista to Windows 7.

7. Windows 7 deployments can be completely automated when moving from Windows XP to Windows 7 (user state, OS, drivers, applications, domain join, etc.) using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 or System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2.