In Windows XP the only kind of built in imaging technology we have is through RIS, when we run riprep and send the machine image back to the RIS server for deployment. Hence, we would use Ghost or another product to make images for deployment by some other means than RIS. Ghost commonly is used to multicast or unicast over the network, but we can also load an image from a DVD or external HDD.
Windows Vista for the first time provides us with the general purpose imaging tools that can be used with the network, hard disk, DVD or whatever. One of my goals this year is to learn how to use these technologies. We don't have very many Vista machines just yet and probably won't so WDS might be off the agenda since it will have a new learning curve to follow. For the majority of deployments expected in the coming year I will be happy just to use an external HDD to load the image to a PC.
To begin with, this is the basic guide for learning how to image a Vista PC and load that image on another PC. I'll see how it goes and get back with progress reports:
