Ghost Solution Suite

I've used Ghost a couple years ago and had great results with it.  Saved me a lot of time.  I'm now working with a smaller firm that would benefit from this product and was asked a question by an owner that I didn't have an immediate answer for, and told him that I would check with Symantec and get back to him.

We understand when we get a new model of PC and set it up to a standard, we're able to save that image as a ghost image and be able to push it down to other computers of the same make/madel and have it all set up.  His question is, "Doesn't the machine with the new image still have the same OS serial number as the old one, even though you purchased the new computer with a licensed OS."

I understand what he means and I'm hoping to find an explanation in this forum.  Do we need to have volume licensing from Microsoft or what is the way to explain this and still be compliant?

I would appreciate your input.

Yes, if you are imaging multiple machines with the same image, you need a volume license to remain compliant, either a MAK key or a KMS server, depending on the size of your organisation.  If you create an image and run sysprep then this will generalise the image and strip out items such as the machine name.  As long as your sysprep.ini does not contain the O/S product key then you will start up with mini setup and will be asked to enter a license key - which could be the one that came with the machine assuming you are working with the vendor's OEM image.