M
Matt
Greets -
I'm wondering if I can do the following legally and physically to make life
easier
I work for a small shop that does home PC repair. We get a lot of machines
in for repair, and some need rebuilds. The delimma is when a customer needs
a PC rebuilt, owns a legal license (sticker on outside of case) but either
can't find/doesn't have their restore CDs, which happens a LOT. Since I
have much experience w/ Ghost and sysprep (in the corporate world) I'd like
to make some kind of ghost image that will prompt for their serial on boot,
which I know can be done. What I run into is, certain builds don't accept
certain serial numbers. For example, if I use a general OEM CD to build,
and put in, say a Gateway serial off their PC, it gets rejected. I have to
hope that they can find their restore CDs usually. Basically I'm looking
to cut down turnaround time for the customers, while still doing this all
right and legal.
What I need to know is:
a> Can I do what I'd like to do legally? The serial numbers would be the
ones already owned by that customer who needs the PC rebuilt. So to my
mind, this should be all legal but if anyone knows any reason why it
wouldn't be, please tell me and I'll be happy to cease looking into it.
b> Can I make a ghost image that would work across multple OEMs, or will I
just need to make and sysprep an image for each OEM, i.e. a WinXP for
Gateway, WinXP for Dell, WinXP for HP (if it's trashed on the HD stored
version), etc. I don't know enough about how the serials are separated to
know if it's by OEM, or by some kind of software generation release. Or
would this even work?
c> Same questions for other OS's.. Windows ME is still prevalent around
here, as is Win98 first and second edition.. as well as a scattered W95
machine here and there. Granted W95 and 98, and possibly ME may not be able
to be prepped how I like, but XP is the going foward
d> Anything I'm missing here?
I appreciate any ideas and info that anyone has!
Thanks,
Matt
I'm wondering if I can do the following legally and physically to make life
easier
I work for a small shop that does home PC repair. We get a lot of machines
in for repair, and some need rebuilds. The delimma is when a customer needs
a PC rebuilt, owns a legal license (sticker on outside of case) but either
can't find/doesn't have their restore CDs, which happens a LOT. Since I
have much experience w/ Ghost and sysprep (in the corporate world) I'd like
to make some kind of ghost image that will prompt for their serial on boot,
which I know can be done. What I run into is, certain builds don't accept
certain serial numbers. For example, if I use a general OEM CD to build,
and put in, say a Gateway serial off their PC, it gets rejected. I have to
hope that they can find their restore CDs usually. Basically I'm looking
to cut down turnaround time for the customers, while still doing this all
right and legal.
What I need to know is:
a> Can I do what I'd like to do legally? The serial numbers would be the
ones already owned by that customer who needs the PC rebuilt. So to my
mind, this should be all legal but if anyone knows any reason why it
wouldn't be, please tell me and I'll be happy to cease looking into it.
b> Can I make a ghost image that would work across multple OEMs, or will I
just need to make and sysprep an image for each OEM, i.e. a WinXP for
Gateway, WinXP for Dell, WinXP for HP (if it's trashed on the HD stored
version), etc. I don't know enough about how the serials are separated to
know if it's by OEM, or by some kind of software generation release. Or
would this even work?
c> Same questions for other OS's.. Windows ME is still prevalent around
here, as is Win98 first and second edition.. as well as a scattered W95
machine here and there. Granted W95 and 98, and possibly ME may not be able
to be prepped how I like, but XP is the going foward
d> Anything I'm missing here?
I appreciate any ideas and info that anyone has!
Thanks,
Matt