Computer Lab problems.

[35g700]

Hi,

I recently started working as a part time computer for a local school while I finish college. One of the schools has a computer lab with about 20 identical computers all running Windows Vista that login to a Windows 2003 active directory server. We recently got a few more computers (with identical hardware) to add to the lab. The previous technician made an disk image for the lab PCs and put it on an external hard disk. The disk image I found that was made for the lab is a .VHD file, it's about 16GB but I'm not sure how to "install" it on these new machines. I've tried the Windows Backup utility, but it does not recognize the image file.

After trying unsuccessfully to use the previous technicians .VHD file to image the machine I made my own by using clonezilla to make an image of one of the working lab machines hard drives. After I made the image I installed it on two machines then I logged into the local computer and changed their name. I was able to log into the domain using a new account on the first machine and everything worked fine, but when I tried to log into the domain with the second computer I got the following error message: "The security database on the server does not have a computer account for this workstation trust relationship." I then tried to log into the computer that I made my clonezilla image from and I got the same error.

I'm wondering if the new machines need to be added to the server, but I'm not really sure what to do at this point. Does anyone else have experience with this sort of thing?

Thanks for any and all help

 

[carnageX]

Delete the computer from active directory if it exists, and then re-add it.

I would look into FOG for use with the computer lab. That way you can multicast the image to the whole lab over the network rather than one at a time.

 

[iFargle]

Yeah, dropping and re-adding to the domain usually fixes that error. Happens on my Windows 7 machines in my lab. (login locally, ie "%COMPUTERNAME%\<admin user>")

My district has the Dell KACE imaging system. Works very well;

 

[carnageX]

I know Jayce uses FOG at the school he works at.

I've used Ghost at the school I work for, and used SCCM with the company I work for now as well. Use Ghost for older / manufacturing machines that require XP, and SCCM for our Win7 machines.

 

[35g700]

Ok, tomorrow I'll try removing and the adding the computer again.

 

[Reckless]

Why not just do a clean install?

You can use a program like Jellybean to get the cd-key if needed.
You can also download an iso from the microsoft website.

 

[carnageX]

Why not just do a clean install?

You can use a program like Jellybean to get the cd-key if needed.
You can also download an iso from the microsoft website.

Because doing that for 20+ computers in a lab would take forever...

Try working in a large-scale setting where you need to install Windows on many computers, with lots of software/drivers on them. Manually doing it is a pain; that's what images are for. You can setup one system, tweak it how it needs to be, install software, etc, and then just take an image of it and then distribute that image accordingly.

A lot of times Corporate / Enterprise keys are used in situations like this, so a key isn't the issue. It's time, which imaging solves. Imaging over a network can be even faster if the software being used supports Multicast (such as Symantec Ghost or FOG).

 

[Reckless]

I see that but he obviously does not have a proper image setup already which is why I suggested a clean install.

If you make your image without having the computer on the domain, it will work 10 times better.

 

[carnageX]

I see that but he obviously does not have a proper image setup already which is why I suggested a clean install.

If you make your image without having the computer on the domain, it will work 10 times better.

Which would still take 20x longer than just applying the image how he's doing it, and then removing/re-adding the computer to the domain.

Or if you use proper mass-imaging software (CloneZilla is mainly used as a single-PC imaging software solution), there are options to auto-join to the domain (Ghost, FOG, SCCM, etc.).

 

[Reckless]

There are several solutions on corporate level or mass-distribution but as he was using CloneZilla, a clean install before joining the domain would be the simplest option to make an image.


Yes it is possible to just remove and re-add the computer to the domain but anyone working in IT knows nothing ever goes the way you want it to and its never just that simple.