XP SID problem (WXP-Pro)

[Shamrocker]

I did a disk copy of about 50 PC running Windows XP. I have the license for all of the PC, but it is much faster to do a disk copy rather than installing the OS and all of the apps on each PC. According to Microsoft when you disk copy XP, it uses the same SID for all of the PC's, which then shuts down our Network (using Active Directory). Is there any way to change the SID on a PC?
Any help is appreciated

[tom_keefer]

Have you discussed this with Microsoft? If you can demonstrate that you hold the license(s) they may have a work-around.

<font color=purple>Tom</font color=purple>

the oxen are slow ...
but the earth is patient

[schwerv]

We use Norton Ghost to create and distribute images of machines. This has been a huge time saving software for our application. You may want to look into this. The newer version of ghost that we use is supposed to change the SID for each machine.

We have had no problems running our machines on our active directory network.

<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by schwerv on 04/29/03 08:00.</FONT></P>

[noct]

As was already mentioned, Ghost is great for this but if, for some reason, you cannot get Ghost you should look at the tool called Sysprep available from Microsoft. It rips out the SID's in Windows 2000 Pro,Server,Adv Server. I'm not 100% sure that it will work on XP, but for the record it works great with 2k.

[jdharm]

Microsoft refuses to provide any support for "cloned" systems. You must use their slow, complicated, inefficient methods in order to get any support.

A good article on what to do from Symantec, publishers of Ghost (which I also use) www.jdharm.net (http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/1999050308324125>HERE.</a>

Josh
<a)

[paulcook]

Shamrocker - you will need to use the WindowsXP specific Sysprep tool - this will strip all user specific information and SID info out of the image. Once sysprep has run and shut the machine down - you should make your copies - do not let the machine restart prior to making your copy otherwise the mini set-up will run and you will have to run sysprep again. Each copy that you make will then run the mini set-up on the first start of the machine, thus creating the new SID and user specific info including machine name etc.