Booting and disk cloning from a single USB drive

[freckles88]

Hello all,

I recently joined a company selling Point-of-Sales computers. The machines are usually all-in-one devices running on Intel's Atom (netbook) platform.

The machines have USB but no CD-ROM drives. They come with a blank unformatted hard-drive and are basically the same specs. Now I need to install Windows XP Embedded POSReady 2009 on every one of these machines, day in and day out. The guy before me used to take out the hard drives, copy an image to them and screw it back in. This wastes a lot of time. Might as well just run the Windows setup.

I need a solution, whereby I can boot the new computer from a USB Flash Drive and copy an OS image to the blank hard drive. Next time I boot, I take out the USB Flash Drive and let the computer boot from the hard drive and am done!!! Is there a solution like this or am I dreaming?

Please help guys.

Thanks.

 

[freckles88]

What's up, guys? No takers for this challenge? To be more specific, I need to boot from the flash drive and this flash drive should also contain the image file that needs to be copied to the new blank hard drive. So maybe we could create a bootable disk from a disk-imaging software like Norton Ghost and boot the new computer. Then load Ghost from the flash drive and have the image copied to the new blank hard drive. Is this a solution? Does Ghost or other software support this? Or does someone have another cool idea to my problem?
Thanks a lot in advance.

 

[freckles88]

I've been looking around and can't seem to find a solution. Right now, I take out the hard drive, copy an image using Ghost and then plug it back into the new system. Then I boot it, activate windows, enter the license for that machine, stick a license sticker and send it off for despatch.

 

[MrLRichards]

I've been looking around and can't seem to find a solution. Right now, I take out the hard drive, copy an image using Ghost and then plug it back into the new system. Then I boot it, activate windows, enter the license for that machine, stick a license sticker and send it off for despatch.

Hello,
I am currently working on a project for a bank where we are doing exactly what you are looking to do. However, I am just a field tech who has been given a flash drive that installs xp on the machines. I am currently looking to learn how to create these bootable flash drives myself. I am wondering if you have found the solution? One coworker told me that Symantec Ghost should be able to do this but I have not made it that far yet.

 

[The Racing Devon]

"The POSReady 2009 download CD is the OS only and does not contain the companion tools which are only available on the DVD. The evaluation DVD can be ordered from http://windowsembedded.com." Which Would Explain Why The Person Before You Took Out The Hard Drive and Copied a Image to the Hard Drive as that Option is Free with No Costs. The Image is the Setup Only, Meaning you can't boot from a USB/DVD/ or CD That You've Created. You Would need to Purchase the POSReady 2009 Evaluation DVD to Create a USB/DVD/ or CD Setup.

Source: Microsoft TechNet