Sources for system builds for XP

July 8, 2005 8:43 AM

Are there any sources for software builds for home/student systems running XP?

My buddies in IT departments often rely on creating a stable suite of programs that have been tested to work properly with each other as well as with the resident OS. Since I am starting law school, I am putting a high value on being able to recover my laptop quickly from any potential catastrophic failure.

I plan on backing up my save files from my laptop and my desktops "Production" HD to a secondary data storage HD also in the desktop nightly. With the data saves, I will be very comfortable using Ghost to re-image the laptop or the "production" HD whenever needed.

posted by BeerGrin to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Check out this unattended xp installation guide. I've been using it here at work, and it's excellent. I'd definitely recommend it over ghosting.
posted by null terminated at 9:00 AM on July 8, 2005

That is totally sweet, nt.
posted by grouse at 9:14 AM on July 8, 2005

The only problem I have with unattended installations is that some applications will not install unattended and muck the whole thing up. Many will, but those using non-standard installation tools are the killer. Plus, it takes a lot longer to install everything from scratch again than reimage a disk. Think about it.
posted by devilsbrigade at 11:07 AM on July 8, 2005

Thanks NT, I'll read that over in detail later.
posted by BeerGrin at 12:06 PM on July 8, 2005

True devilsbrigade, but every application we need has had silent switches. Also, the unattended installations allow for different hardware configurations.
posted by null terminated at 2:28 PM on July 8, 2005