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Seeking methodology (best practice?) for cloning dissimilar boxes ...

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barney:
Folk,

This one's a bit unusual.  Have a naval buddy on deployment.  He just got two (2) new laptops a couple of days before the deployment.  Both are 64-bit with Win7 Home Premium.

Acer
AMD Athlon X2 dual Core L310, 1.2 GHz
4 GB RAM (3.75 GB usable)
Atheros AR5B93 Wireless (internal)
Realtek HD Audio
ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics

Gateway (red, btw)
Intel Core i3 M330 2.13 GHz (4 core)
4 GB RAM (3.68 GB usable)
Atheros AR5B93 Wireless (internal)
Broadcom NetLink Gigabit Ethernet (internal)
Intel Display Audio
Realtek HD Audio
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD

It has fallen to me to config these boxes while he is away.

The two boxes will be 80% identical insofar as software configuration.

The other 20% will be

* his - electronics, diagramming, & database software - he's the radar/electronics maven on his ship, also breadboards stuff as a hobby.

* hers - AutoCAD & games, prolly World of Warcraft - she's a draftsman and a game junky.

He'll use the Acer, but he's giving the Gateway to his SO (calls her his Social Officer  ;D) as a surprise.  He left all the necessaries to install the special stuff, so that's no problem.

However, I don't want to spend a week or two (2) configuring one box, the doing the same thing with the other.

Equally however, I don't think I can do one box, then image it to the other, due to the disparity in CPU and other variations.

So, what do you think would be the best approach?  Is there a fairly reliable way to image dissimilar PCs?  Never ran across this in the corporate world, and I really don't want to learn the hard way if I can avoid it.

I'm using the Gateway right now, and it is [speedy] sweet!  (Although I'm seeing the application whiteout that I thought was just on my desktop - that's prolly another thread, though.)[/list]

f0dder:
Paragon Virtualization Manager 2010 might be able to do it via P2P, but you'll very likely run into trouble with windows validation...

barney:
I'll take a look at Paragon.

Yeah, the validation thing occurred to me, but I think I can dance my way around that one.  Both boxes have already been validated - he had time to do that much, although I kinda wish he hadn't.

3of0:
I'd be more interested in this from a business standpoint.  I spend 2-5 hours building a new computer from the OS to all the apps.  Dell likes to change their models constantly so we have a slew of different models.  I've given up on keeping 10 images for each model we have.  We are using WinXP now, but Win7 is looking to be coming around the corner soon.  Even if it means re-installing the drivers, it'd be a huge help.  I need to install the drivers anyway doing it how I am. :)

mouser:
great question and issue..

i'm a big fan of automating processes, but knowing when the simpler approach is to document and do it manually.

this may be one of those cases where the most efficient thing is to:
1. setup the one pc by hand as you are planning to do, and keep detailed notes of exactly what you installed and what settings you changed, etc., and keeping a folder of all installed applicatins.
2. then manually reproducing the steps on the second pc.  your notes should make it pretty straightforward.

i just wouldnt trust automating the process on 2 different pieces of hardware.

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