Windows & Office Deployment

Automate installations with answer files

Setting up Windows 11 or Office 365 (or 2024) on a new machine manually can waste a lot of your time, and time is money.

But what if I told you, that just by adding a small answer file to your Windows installation media, you can automate many manual tasks, such as:

• You can skip selecting the language and keyboard, and accepting the EULA, when you start from the installation media.

• You can even automatically delete, format, and re-partition the entire hard drive and install Windows automatically

• You can add the machine to your company's domain, enter the WiFi password automatically, and make changes to the registry

• Start up the computer with a local admin account and download and install many programs, before automatically shutting it off

The same goes for automating installations of Office 365, or Office 2021, 2024, etc.:

• What if you want only certain components installed? Maybe you don't need MS Access or Publisher? You can configure the answer files to skip these components

• What if you want multiple languages and proofing tools automatically added to your Office installation? You can define those in the answer file as well

• You can even change the settings of MS Word, Excel, etc. to fit your needs

• And the cool thing about it: You can run the Office answer file automatically from the Windows answer file, so it installs Office just the way you like it during Windows setup

Sounds interesting? Book a free 30 minute consultation call to find out if an answer file is the "answer" (get it?) to your problems!

Run Windows from an External Hard Drive

Consider the following situations:

• You're travelling somewhere, where - for security reasons - you don't want to take your expensive laptop with you, but you have easy access to other computers in that area

• Your laptop gets stolen, or a virus infects it, and now you can't access any files stored on it

• You're an IT guy who just loves to boot laptops from an external hard drive for troubleshooting or testing, and that old linux live CD just won't cut it

If you're lucky (and careful), all your important data should be stored on a server, and you can get them back, after re-installing your laptop or buying a new one, which could take many hours of setting it up just the way you wanted.

The good news is that modern hard drives are fast and small enough, that you can run a fully functional Windows 11 version from them without any noticeable lag. This means you can have YOUR Windows setup ready to go in your pocket. All you need is to connect it to a computer and boot (i.e. start) it from the external hard drive.

Not only that, but if you want to speed things up the first time you run Windows from an external hard drive, you can also combine it with answer files or previously created Windows images to ensure a smooth start.

Interested? Or not sure if this option is the best for your needs? Book a free 30 minute consultation call!

Creating Pre-Configured Windows "Thick" Images

This is the granddaddy of Windows deployments. It's not what the cool kids are doing anymore, but by gump, it still works!

What this means is: You set up a computer just the way you like it: You install Windows, all the necessary drivers, settings, updates, software, and so on, and then you create an image (i.e. copy) of that installation, which will usually be about 15 Gigabytes or more in size, depending on your setup, then you install that image on another computer, and you'll have the exact same setup.

Why is this older approach to deploying Windows still useful? It depends:

• Let's say your company uses rugged logistics tablets with a "long-term" version of Windows on them, that only needs to be updated in a few years, instead of months

• Or, your company bought 20 new computers, all of them the same model, and needs them to be ready as fast as possible

In these cases, copying a pre-configured Windows image on multiple devices with similar hardware is way quicker than installing each machine with an answer file. You can, however, use an answer file to automate the way the computer starts up for the first time.

Interested? Or not sure if this option is the best for your needs? Book a free 30 minute consultation call!