Sysprep is the name of Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

's System Preparation Utility for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 operating system deployment.

History

Sysprep was originally introduced for use with Windows NT 4.0

Windows NT 4.0

Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It was the next release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996...

. Later versions introduced for Windows 2000

Windows 2000

Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...

 and Windows XP

Windows XP

Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...

 are available for download from Microsoft and included in the Windows CD. Windows Vista

Windows Vista

Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

 marks the first version of Microsoft's NT operating system to include a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) independent version of Sysprep in the "out of box" installation.

Purpose

Desktop deployment is typically performed via disk cloning

Disk cloning

Disk cloning is the process of copying the contents of one computer hard disk to another disk or to an "image" file. Often, the contents of the first disk are written to an image file as an intermediate step, and the second disk is loaded with the contents of the image...

 applications.
Sysprep can be used to prepare an operating system for disk cloning

Disk cloning

Disk cloning is the process of copying the contents of one computer hard disk to another disk or to an "image" file. Often, the contents of the first disk are written to an image file as an intermediate step, and the second disk is loaded with the contents of the image...

 and restoration via a disk image

Disk image

A disk image is a single file or storage device containing the complete contents and structure representing a data storage medium or device, such as a hard drive, tape drive, floppy disk, CD/DVD/BD, or USB flash drive, although an image of an optical disc may be referred to as an optical disc image...

.

Windows operating system installations include many unique elements per installation that need to be "generalized" before capturing and deploying a disk image to multiple computers. Some of these elements include:

• Computer name
  Naming scheme
  A naming scheme is a plan for naming objects. In computing, naming schemes are often used for objects connected into computer networks.-Naming schemes in computing:Large networks often use a systematic naming scheme, such as using a location A naming scheme is a plan for naming objects. In...
  
  
• Security Identifier
  Security Identifier
  In the context of the Microsoft Windows NT line of operating systems, a Security Identifier is a unique name which is assigned by a Windows Domain controller during the log on process that is used to identify a subject, such as a user or a group of users in a network of NT/2000...
  
   (SID)
• Driver Cache

Sysprep seeks to solve these issues by allowing for the generation of new computer names, unique SIDs, and custom driver cache databases during the Sysprep process.

Administrators can use tools such as SetupMgr.exe (Windows XP) or the Windows Automated Installation Kit

Windows Automated Installation Kit

Windows Automated Installation Kit is a collection of tools and technologies produced by Microsoft designed to help deploy Microsoft Windows operating system images to target computers or to a VHD . It was first introduced with Windows Vista.- History :Windows AIK Version 1.0 was released with...

 (Windows Vista/7/Server 2008) to generate answer files that Sysprep will process on new computer deployments.

External links

• How to use the Sysprep tool to automate successful deployment of Windows XP
• Hardware devices not installed in Sysprep image
• Description of New Features in Sysprep for Windows XP
• Informational guide on how to use Sysprep for deploying Windows 2000/XP
• Force Sysprep to Prompt for a Computer Name During Mini-Setup in Windows XP
• Sysprep for Windows 2008 R2
• Another useful (but not perfect) tool is "NewSid"