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Imaging computers

Whenever a TU Windows computer stops being functional, the best course of action is to nuke the OS and start anew.

Requirements

  • A USB flash drive that boots to Ghost
  • Network session name and IP address provided to you by full time staff
  • About an hour block. This process could take a while

Steps

Booting to Ghost

  1. Restart the computer and change boot drive
    • It depends on the PC manufacturer but it's usually F12 or DEL
    • I recommend plugging it in the back of the PC if possible. Front USB ports aren't always reliable when using those as ports to boot into an external drive.

Imaging the OS

  1. Wait for Ghost to finish initializing
    • It looks sketch, but it's fine. You can't do anything worse to the computer.
  2. Select Cast then Multicast
  3. Input in the GhostCast Session name that you were provided with
  4. Select the computer's hard drive containing the OS.
    • It's usually the biggest size drive on the list
  5. Ghost should automatically select the correct partition, so just hit Next
  6. Wait until the imaging is done
  7. Unplug the USB drive
    • This step prevents the computer from booting back into Ghost (slight inconvenience)
    • If it does boot back to the USB stick, just restart the computer and change which drive to boot from

First boot into Windows

System Preparations Tools pop up will appear on the screen

  1. Set System Cleanup Action to Out-of-Box Experience
  2. Check Generalize

Adding computer to university domain

  1. Look up "About PC"
  2. Rename the computer with CLS-<COLLECTION_CODE>-01
  3. Set "Domain" to "towson.edu"

You will be prompted to enter in your credentials and the computer will reboot