AutoInstall for NT: Complete NT Installation Over the Network

This paper describes how we take a bare PC and turn it into a fully functioning NT desktop machine with a standard set of applications in less than 30 minutes. In 1996 we identified OS and application loading as a significant portion of our workload. Loading NT, loading our standard suite of applications, and configuring each of them to our specifications took 4 to 8 hours. This process was prone to errors that were not detected until months later. We automated the process so that an SA with our special boot disk can do the entire process in 30 minutes (60 minutes on a slow network). We do an actual NT installation. We do not clone. With our new system, a single SA can deploy up to 20 PC’s per day as opposed to just 1 or 2 per day.