Say goodbye to reloading—Windows XP Image Creation Guide

Reinstalling the system is not a fun thing: first sit at the computer desk and honestly answer the questions raised by the Windows installer, install it, too Can not be idle, have to install drivers, applications... rough estimate, not for a long time can not get down! Some friends may say that using Ghost is fast and convenient. Within five minutes, the system will be restored. However, it is only a local backup. If you get someone else's machine to recover, it will definitely be "unacceptable". The reason is very simple: Hardware, system, and network configuration can't be the same... But after reading this article, you can easily create a master key. Any machine can easily use Ghost to restore the installation method. It can be more than 10 minutes. Get the installation of Windows XP!

First, get ready.
Install Windows XP and use Windows Update to upgrade the latest system patches (including Service Pack 1 and other latest Hot fix). Also install the required application at the same time, but don't be greedy, because installing the application on the C drive is not recommended, and it will cause the Ghost image file to be too large.

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Second, for Windows XP to lose weight
Whether you need to burn the final Ghost image file to CD, you should Lose weight on Windows XP to minimize the capacity of Ghost image files. The main items that can be deleted are as follows:

1. System File Protection Cache
It is located in the C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\Dllcache directory. We only need to run "sfc.exe /purgecache" in the command prompt window to delete it.

2. Clear the page file
Right click on "My Computer" and select "Properties". In the "System Properties" dialog that opens, select the "Advanced" tab, click the "Settings" button under "Performance", select the "Advanced" tab in the "Performance Options" dialog box that opens, and then click the right The "Change" button in the lower corner opens the "Virtual Memory" dialog. By default, the virtual memory file is saved in the Windows XP installation directory. We just need to select the "No paging file" option below, and then click the "Settings" button. The virtual memory file is deleted after you restart your computer. Pay attention to the hard disk image file and then reset the virtual memory.

3. Turn off System Restore
In the System Properties dialog that opens, select the System Restore tab and check the box next to Turn off System Restore on all drives.

4. Other methods
We can also use other conventional "weight loss" methods such as deleting help files, deleting unwanted input methods, font files, etc. to further reduce the size of the partition where Windows XP is located.

Third, the operation of the driver
Since we are going to make a versatile Windows XP Ghost file, the hardware configuration on the target computer and the current computer configuration are definitely not exactly the same, so we will The device driver on the current computer is removed.

1. Deleting a normal driver

1 Enter "devmgmt.msc" in the "Run" dialog and press Enter to open the "Device Manager" console window.

2 Locate the network adapter, right-click the NIC device name under it, and click the Uninstall menu item on the pop-up menu.

3 Then use a similar method to uninstall device drivers such as universal serial bus controllers, video game controllers, graphics cards, and sound cards. It should be noted here that if the system prompts you to restart, you must not restart the machine, so as to avoid the system self-assertion and reinstall the driver.

2. Update the ACPI attribute
Then we need to change the ACPI attribute of the computer to Standard PC. This is because if there is a different type of ACPI in the target computer, the newly cloned target computer cannot implement the computer soft shutdown, and may be in the first Crash after one boot! The steps to change are as follows:

1 Right-click "Computer" → ACPI Uniprocessor PC in the Device Manager console window and click the "Update Driver" menu item on the pop-up menu;

2 In the "Hardware Update Wizard" dialog box that opens, select the "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)" option and click the "Next" button;

3 in the next page Check the "Don't search, I want to choose the driver to install" option and click the "Next" button;

4 then select the "Standard PC" option, as shown in Figure 1, and according to the screen Prompt all the way to Next, but only when prompted to restart, do not restart!

.Update IDE controller properties
The last step in the device driver is to change the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller This step is very important, because everyone knows that different motherboards, such as Intel, Nforce 2, VIA and other motherboards, have different IDE ATA/ATAPI controller drivers, which cannot be universally used!

1 in the device manager console Right click on the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller, Intel(r) 82371 AB/EB Bus Master IDE Controller, click the "Update Driver" menu item on the pop-up menu;

2 is open In the "Hardware Update Wizard" dialog box, select the "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)" option and click the "Next" button;

3 In the next page, select "Don't search, I Select the driver you want to install option and click the "Next" button;

4 then select the "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" option, as shown in Figure 2, and according to the screen prompts Next, all the way, just the last prompt whether to restart, do not restart!

Figure 2 Standard dual-channel PCI IDE controller

Fourth, prepare the main image file
Delete The driver on the "master" can not be said to have been successful. This is because each computer has a unique security identifier (SID: security identifier), if you copy the disk image directly to other computers, then the other Computer has Have the same SID, so you need to use the Sysprep tool to remove the SID of the "master", thus forcing the target computer to generate a new SID.

1.Auto Answer File
When the target computer resumes the clone backup, the system will Start a Mini-Setup wizard process that prompts us to enter specific computer variables such as administrator password, computer name, and more. However, since the driver is removed from the clone backup, it is not possible to interact with the keyboard or mouse at this stage. However, we can create an auto-install answer file that will automatically answer the questions raised by the installer.

1 Insert the Windows XP installation CD into the CD-ROM drive, and release the DEPLOY.CAB file in the \\SUPPORT\\TOOLS\\ directory to the C:\\Sysprep directory;

2 and then run setupmgr.exe File, select the "Sysprep installation" option in the Select installation type interface;

3 Fill in the necessary information according to the screen prompts, and click the "Next" button until you finally enter the dialog box for saving the configuration file. Be sure to ensure that the final installation script path is C:\\Sysprep\\sysprep.inf.

2. Repacking
Now you can use the Sysprep tool to remove the SID of the "master". It is very simple: run the Sysprep.exe program in the C:\\Sysprep directory, and then click the "Repackage" button in the window that opens, as shown in Figure 3. Shown. Next, you will be prompted to regenerate the SID the next time you start, click the "OK" button, wait a moment, the computer will automatically shut down.

Figure 3 Repacking

V. Cloning the main image file
After the computer is shut down, we can boot the computer with the Ghost 2003 boot disk, and then click "Local→ Partition→To Image” command, specify the source partition as the C drive, set the path and file name of the Ghost image file, and start the backup. After the backup is over, we have a versatile Windows XP image file!