I need to do the same thing On over 400 laptops!!! Shortcut?

[Ninjasupahsquid]

So... I am a student at a school... and I have this class where I get to be the IT guy... and we have 400 New Laptops that come with windows 8... My IT advisor wants me to Install Windows 10 and install a ton of programs... Is there a way that I can do the process from start to finish and then do it to all the computers... Is there a way to do this... I was thinking cloning the hard drives but The IT advisor says that they tried that... and it didn't work... any ideas... 

[LukeSavenije]

I'm thinking of a custom iso... but I have absolutly no idea how to do that...

 

if anyone does, mention me

Edited January 15, 2019 by LukeSavenije

[brandon0852]

there are a few ways, cloning the drive would require sys prepping windows before you clone it to other computers to regen that guid.
even if they say it doesnt work, you can always test it. there are a ton of videos and documents about cloning  windows for deployments.

[.Apex.]

4 minutes ago, Ninjasupahsquid said:

So... I am a student at a school... and I have this class where I get to be the IT guy... and we have 400 New Laptops that come with windows 8... My IT advisor wants me to Install Windows 10 and install a ton of programs... Is there a way that I can do the process from start to finish and then do it to all the computers... Is there a way to do this... I was thinking cloning the hard drives but The IT advisor says that they tried that... and it didn't work... any ideas... 

400 identical laptops? cloning the drive should work just fine, they just probably didn't know how to do it properly

[SilverflashII]

I would investigate cloud options. Maybe run a virtual machine  on the cloud with installed OS, then Add  all L-tops, and do the process once on all machines via one machine to install from the cloud the O.S + apps. (might be talking out my *** here but that's my theory)

Edit: 
Might need to make a seperate partition for this solution, so that you could install Windows 10 on one partition and delete the other partition later.

Edited January 15, 2019 by SilverflashII

[GoodBytes]

Don't clone. You have no idea if the drive on these laptop are actually identical.

 

Cloning requires to setup 1 system and get a computer where you can process multiple drive to clone as, or one by one. This is lengthy.

What you want to do is image deployment. Form an image with the system fully configured and network deploy it. You can do 10 computers like you do 400 or 10,000. As long as the system are the same network, you can push the image for the select systems.

 

How to do it will depends on the tools you have. You can do network booting if the systems are set to do this, where it boots to a solution which deploys images. You can have a software that runs on the system which detects image deployment push via the server software on the network to restart and perform the image deployment.

[Lord Nicoll]

9 minutes ago, Ninjasupahsquid said:

So... I am a student at a school... and I have this class where I get to be the IT guy... and we have 400 New Laptops that come with windows 8... My IT advisor wants me to Install Windows 10 and install a ton of programs... Is there a way that I can do the process from start to finish and then do it to all the computers... Is there a way to do this... I was thinking cloning the hard drives but The IT advisor says that they tried that... and it didn't work... any ideas... 

You can create custom installation media by adding things like programmes and drivers to the OS image, however cloning might be faster. Set up a master machine with the hardware required to copy a cloned drive, and simply pull the HDD's out of the laptops and clone away, if the PC you're using is good enough, you might be able to do a few at once. If they have NVMe then it might get a bit harder but it'd still be possible. There are many cloning tools. 

[Velcade]

12 minutes ago, Ninjasupahsquid said:

So... I am a student at a school... and I have this class where I get to be the IT guy...

This sounds like homework.  You should explore this for yourself

[brandon0852]

1 minute ago, Velcade said:

This sounds like homework.  You should explore this for yourself

[Lord Nicoll]

2 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Don't clone. You have no idea if the drive on these laptop are actually identical.

 

Cloning requires to setup 1 system and get a computer where you can process multiple drive to clone as, or one by one. This is lengthy.

What you want to do is image deployment. Form an image with the system fully configured, and network deploy it. You can do 10 computers like you do 400 or 10,000. As long as the system are the same network, you can push the deployment.

 

How to do it, will depends on the tools you have. You can do network booting if the systems are set to do this, where it boots to a solution which deploys images. You can have a software that runs on the system which detects image deployment push via the server software on the network to restart and perform the image deployment.

Yeah, that's definitely the real way to do it, I wonder does the school he's at have a spare rack server and some spare networking equipment, it'd be easier if he was on a separate network that he could have control over. Otherwise it might get a bit messy and require some network admin. 

[BrinkGG]

14 minutes ago, Ninjasupahsquid said:

So... I am a student at a school... and I have this class where I get to be the IT guy... and we have 400 New Laptops that come with windows 8... My IT advisor wants me to Install Windows 10 and install a ton of programs... Is there a way that I can do the process from start to finish and then do it to all the computers... Is there a way to do this... I was thinking cloning the hard drives but The IT advisor says that they tried that... and it didn't work... any ideas... 

The slow way:

Microtool partition Wizard. 

On one laptop, update to windows 10 and install all programs necessary. Then use an external hard drive and clone the hard drive of that laptop to the external drive, then boot off of that external drive and clone it to the rest of the drives in the laptops. 

 

Fast way: 

Create an image, then deploy it with something like smartDeploy: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/983392-smartdeploy-disk-imaging-software-giveaway-655-value/

Or, use windows built in tools. Read more about them here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/windows-deployment-scenarios-and-tools

[Ryanwake]

17 minutes ago, Ninjasupahsquid said:

So... I am a student at a school... and I have this class where I get to be the IT guy... and we have 400 New Laptops that come with windows 8... My IT advisor wants me to Install Windows 10 and install a ton of programs... Is there a way that I can do the process from start to finish and then do it to all the computers... Is there a way to do this... I was thinking cloning the hard drives but The IT advisor says that they tried that... and it didn't work... any ideas... 

Well there are only three options and the third one is impractical.

   Slow but easy, u can justify the time with convenience and the fact that it's in bashas.

*Clone a drive 400 times

  Pro, it's faster than installing Windows manually

  Con, it requires a whole computer to clone one drive at the same time

  Con, docks are more expensive than flash drives

               Best option

*Install Windows manually on every computer, which means all you need is 50 flash drives and a week.

   Pro, the only required computer is the one you're installing it on

   Con, very repetitive and you have to have 50 plus laptops running at the same time 

 

                  Impractical

*Get every computer to boot over the network, so u a an Install windows without 50 flash drived

 

   Pro, it should only take about 20% more time than the first option

 

   Con, how do you get a computer to boot over the network and install Windows to itself at the same time?

 

[Eastman51]

I would look up how to create a deployment image, this would install Windows and the software as well as configure every setting that you had changed in Windows on the first machine.

Once you have a deployment image, you either create a bootable USB drive, DVD/CD/BD, or create a WDS (Windows Deployment Server). The WDS would allow you to image dozens of machines at once (granted they all have an Ethernet connection to the server), but they can be a pain to setup and troubleshoot. Of course, a ton of USB drives and DVDs with the image on them would be nearly as fast too.

[alexhatesu]

33 minutes ago, Ninjasupahsquid said:

So... I am a student at a school... and I have this class where I get to be the IT guy... and we have 400 New Laptops that come with windows 8... My IT advisor wants me to Install Windows 10 and install a ton of programs... Is there a way that I can do the process from start to finish and then do it to all the computers... Is there a way to do this... I was thinking cloning the hard drives but The IT advisor says that they tried that... and it didn't work... any ideas... 

You could try using a pxe server with a custom ISO. Create a system image using some kind of imaging software like Clonezilla. Here at my work we use Landesk for large deployments.

[Eastman51]

1 minute ago, Ryanwake said:

Get every computer to boot over the network, so u a an Install windows without 50 flash drived

 

 Con, how do you get a computer to boot over the network and install Windows to itself at the same time?

You use a WDS running on Windows server. Then you choose the PXE boot option when you turn on the laptop, it runs as if you had a USB drive plugged in and installs Windows. We use one at work. I didn't set it up, nor have I messed with it when it breaks; one of my coworkers is well versed in WDS. He says it's "a b**** and a half" to fix it.

[Joeynote3]

30 minutes ago, syn2112 said:

400 identical laptops? cloning the drive should work just fine, they just probably didn't know how to do it properly

Yes but that's too slow and how many docks would he need?

 

I'm thinking he can borrow 50 flash drives, and install Windows on 50 laptops at a time.

 

Maybe it's possible to clone from a flash drive on to the system in question, that would be aswme

[brandon0852]

12 minutes ago, Eastman51 said:

You use a WDS running on Windows server. Then you choose the PXE boot option when you turn on the laptop, it runs as if you had a USB drive plugged in and installs Windows. We use one at work. I didn't set it up, nor have I messed with it when it breaks; one of my coworkers is well versed in WDS. He says it's "a b**** and a half" to fix it.

WDS is great for PXE'ing WinPE. MDT is where its at for the whole deployment. Its an absolute pain to configure but its amazing when it just works.

[Eastman51]

16 minutes ago, James Evens said:

@Eastman51 unless they configure the notebooks the way you want you would still need to change 400 times the boot config since PXE boot is the lowest boot priority and the notebooks already have a windows installed.

As long as PXE is enabled, boot priority is irrelevant. You just hit f9 (or whatever the boot menu key is) and select the PXE option.

 

8 minutes ago, brandon0852 said:

WDS is great for PXE'ing WinPE. MDT is where its at for the whole deployment. Its an absolute pain to configure but its amazing when it just works.

Agreed.