Any IT folk mass deploy Vista yet?

[Roasted]

I'm stuck. Like... really stuck. It's one of those "balls on the line" type of things.

I'm a faithful Ubuntu user, blah blah blah, but I work in a Windows environment, dominated by XP Pro and recently introduced Vista. Talk about a headache so far.

If it counts for anything with this discussion, I use FOG (built on top of Ubuntu) to do my imaging, so at least I have some relevance to the forum!

But seriously, I have googled high and low and asked everywhere. Anybody who works with Windows in the IT world is going to be familiar with default profiles. Does anybody know how to set them up, step by step, for Windows Vista? I swear Vista has done some weird stuff. I've gotten blue screens from changing the profile, random driver installations, I even somehow picked up a media extender when I wasn't connected to the network. I don't understand. I just need to get the job done.

Does anybody have any input?

[quixote]

No input, but I bet ask-slashdot would post this question. And after you'd waded through the 400 useless trolls, there's probably a good likelihood of finding some sysops who come across with useful info.

I hope something works out for you! On a much more smaller level, I had the same experience. I needed to show somebody some Powerpoint tricks in time for an important lecture, they were using Vista and the new Office, and I could barely figure out how to do the simplest thing. That was wildly annoying, so I can only imagine how you feel.

[Regenweald]

I take it, you did not vote yes on this decision. Is it because you have to go through vista to upgrade to 7 ? or was someone higher up on the totem pole smoking something expired ?

Best of luck man. i run from vista, had 6 kernel_data_inpage blue screens in a week :)

Edit: forgot, check the msadmin forums. bound to find some help...

[Roasted]

I did post on the Microsoft forums. I didn't get any responses.

I work for a school district, and we're doing a complete wave of new systems this year due to how old our previous systems were. We got these all-in-one computers for the four elementary schools from Dell. Oh my gosh they are such nice computers, and at a great price too. The trick is, the only come with Vista. There's no XP drivers. No XP driver for the chipset exists - I went as far as calling Nvidia and totally being wtf I need this!

So in short - I have absolutely no choice. I must stick with Vista. We will upgrade to Windows 7 this time next year anyway, but right now I'm just in the biggest time restraint of my life and Vista just isn't playing nice.

I don't mean to bash Microsoft, I truly have looked at this situation from an unbiased point of view and tried to learn and take everything in. And there's no sense in badmouthing them because at this point in time, it doesn't matter. I just need to get the job done. I don't need to waste time running my mouth. But I can sincerely say with absolute certainty that Microsoft has most definitely screwed up this section of their operating system with Vista. I cannot believe someone on the board thought "Oh, yeah! The default profiles. Instead of making it 2 steps, make it 917 steps and don't provide detailed documentation. Great idea!" The scary thing is, Windows 7 is built the same way in this department too. What a great summer I have to look forward to in 2010.

I'm just so frustrated with this. Each school I go to I keep hearing from principals "Now, you know, it's not a BIG deal (but they say it in a voice that suggests I will be brutally neutered otherwise) These systems HAVE to be running, right?"

I'm sorry. I didn't buy these. I just have to deal with them.

Anybody have any other input before I leap off a bridge?

[Delever]

Try and google and repeat...

[Regenweald]

Don't jump!!! fight through the pain...7 will be there soon enough.

[Roasted]

Try and google and repeat...

If only you could see my work laptop.

Every link on the first 20 pages of Google is purple.

Believe me, I have exhausted every link, every reference I know, every thing I could have tried I did.

I just find it really shotty that there's not solid documentation on this. The guides literally say:

Oh hey. To get a default profile, you need the Unattend.xml file. But to use it, you need sysprep.exe. But don't worry about that yet, you need to get WSIM first which creates the Unattend.xml file. But wait, to get WSIM, you need WAIK. So download WAIK, burn to a DVD, boot to it, then it generates WSIM, which then generates the Unattend.xml file, which then you can edit it and adjust the CopyProfile parameter, THEN you can run sysprep to launch it, THEN you can finally upload your ******* image and get the job done.

Seriously.
Microsoft.
Use your head next time.
Please...

[Roasted]

Don't jump!!! fight through the pain...7 will be there soon enough.

7 will be the same as Vista in terms of what I'm trying to do, so it's not like Windows 7 will offer anything different in that department.

[Regenweald]

7 will be the same as Vista in terms of what I'm trying to do, so it's not like Windows 7 will offer anything different in that department.

Shiney new front, nothing of importance changed eh ? I wish i could help.

[Roasted]

Shiney new front, nothing of importance changed eh ? I wish i could help.

Well I mean I run 7 in a VM and I kinda like it. I can see where certain aspects of 7 improved over Vista, but the default profile thing I'm trying to do has stayed the same from all I've read, hence me being stuck. :(

If only Nvidia made a damn chipset driver for this computer I woulda had it on XP so fast....