Are they still making HPC?

I know nothing on fast recovery, that could well be a different ball game. The installation is basically imaged, registration processes are thinned down, the fat sliced leanly away from the installation with aim to get you to the desktop.

Or at least so is the pre-Beta theory

hmmm ... sounds like sysprep to me. I used that for Win2k way back in my previous life, for aiding in deployment of Win2k across corporate desktops. Maybe its not exactly the same thingie, but prob in the same line.

The cool thing with sysprep was that you could build custom base images yourself. So after you install the OS and the apps with all necessary configuration, you create a sysprep image. With that image, you can do a recovery fairly quickly ... around 30mins or so ... depending on media. You can also do so over PXE (netboot)!! So if the loooongHorn is using an advanced form of sysprep to do so, I say "Cool"!

Sysprep just removed the manus from the installation, it doesn't speed up the file copy / registration method at the end of the install. This uses imaging to do the deed.

You do raise a point though in that the longhorn installer will aim to have less input required frm the wizard (some like me may see that as further example of less customisation - I, ruing the day they ever took out the custom componant options from 4.x)

errr ... I don't think sysprep redo any install. Only one base install is required. Subsequent machines are "cloned" or imaged from the base image that sysprep prepares.

From what I know sysprep allows one to create an image based on a configured base, ie an installed XP/2k machine with necessary apps and configurations in place. This means, it is not merely removing the menus from installation. Effectively, sysprep allows an image of an installed system, so the new machine do not need to go through another installation process.

Overview of the Sysprep Process


How to use the Sysprep tool to automate successful deployment of Windows XP


Maybe we are talking about a different sysprep here. The sysprep I am talking about is the one used in Win2k and subsequently WinXP. Or maybe your definition of "installation" refers to the cloning/imaging process and not the typical installation process per se.

(I'm a Microsoft certified OEM) Sysprep is for creating customised data points, as you pointed out. But doesn't change the fundimentals of the installation. it still goes through the same steps on each PC at the beginning of the OOBI - where it back end installs custom layers from the Sysprep.

When you do a direct ghost from system to system it still has to sprawl through the hardware database and perform the system registration as well as all the OEM / Coprorate layer bits. Under longhorn the idea is for all this to be shaken up in to something radical.

(when I say registration I don't mean user registration cards, I mean registry)

Longhorm will have the NT6 Sysprep along with it on the ride tocarry out those fundimentals

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