I have several of the same machine (Dell Precision T3500) that originally came with Windows 7 Pro (there is a Windows 7 Pro OA product key sticker on top of each one). These were initially downgraded to XP by a former IT colleague, but are now back in the pool of unused machines. I am looking to format and install Windows 7 Pro on one of them using the latest official Win7 installer ISO with SP1 and then clone the hard drive to the other machines.
The questions then, are:
Does this even make sense, or is there a better way to do this considering I'm only doing it to 6 machines?
Does this jive with MS licensing (we are the original purchaser of the machines, and thus, presumably, the license holder...but I'm no expert)?
Is it possible to apply the individual 25-char product keys to the cloned machines after cloning?
How far can I go in the config process (installing corporate standard apps and such) before I have to clone to the other machines considering the licensing/key questions?
UPDATE
My final process was to build one box, sysprep /oobe ... and capture/deploy with imagex. The license keys activate fine online after imaging. I'm not sure how to script domain, printer, etc. after imaging, but that's for another question someday. The time saved with Win updates and IDE installs alone was well worth it. Thanks, all.
Yes, imaging is a good idea, even for a small number of machines. You are getting some amount of time savings by not repeating tasks, but you're also getting consistency and the ability to re-image a machine if it needs an OS reinstall. E.g. virus/malware, drive dies, some major file corruption, etc. Our policy is if it's going to take more than 30 minutes to troubleshoot and tweak to fix an issue, it gets reimaged instead.
Regarding the licensing of imaging with OEM licenses, see this Msft article for some more details regarding this scenario: OEMSoftwareLicensingRulesandRestrictions.pdf
In short, if you own at least 1 volume licensed copy of Windows 7 Professional, you get access to the VL installation media and VL product key for Win 7 Pro. You would then use that to do the OS install and imaging. The single volume license is essentially just used to get access to the VL media and product key. This applies when your OEM-licensed product is available as an identical volume-licensed product. E.g. Windows 7 Professional.
You can't use the above scenario for OEM/FPP Msft Office licenses because volume-licensed Office doesn't have the same versions as OEM/FPP. For example, there is no Professional or Home & Business version available through VL, only Pro Plus and Standard.
Regarding your question #2, your company purchased the machines, the legit COA is on the box, you're good. OEM licenses live and die with the machine itself; person who owns the machine owns the OEM license.
Regarding your question #4, install every possible thing you can before imaging! The exact software that can be installed depends on your specifics apps, but for all of our LOB apps and such we install all of it before creating the image, as none of them require unique serial numbers or anything like that.
For unique/specific licensing questions, I always call Msft licensing people directly: (800) 426-9400
Once they provide you with an answer, you can ask them to direct you to some sort of written reference that confirms what they tell you.
Yes, it makes sense to do, especially when you factor in how long windows updates will take.
What you need to look into is sysprep, which among other things will deactivate the machine and get it ready to enter in a new license key for windows. Then you will be able to enter the correct key.
I typically install all the apps we will need (Office, Adobe, etc) then run sysprep and image the machine.
I'm not a lawyer or microsoft rep, so I can't answer the licensing questions...I do know that some COA keys will not activate automatically online. I actually use a few scripts to restore the automatic OEM activation that Dell uses when I image Dell machines...whether that is allowed under the license I can't answer.
Another things you may want to look into if reimaging a few machines at a time is something you do frequently is Windows Deployment Services, with which you can create a generic image and a database of drivers so you can deploy the image to any machine. It works quite nicely and deploys images over the network.
The other two have covered most of it pretty well, but regarding #1, I'd say that there certainly isn't a better way to deploy multiple machines in an office than some sort of imaging system. How else you gonna do it? By hand? (Eeeew.)
And it looks pretty damn good on a resume too, which is definitely something you should be thinking about.
As in, "not only do I know how to administer whatever image/machine management system that you use, but I designed and implemented one from scratch for my last employers." Having that on my resume's resulted in me being the choice for the job more than once (rather than making it to the final interview and not getting picked), and bonus points if you can implement a free solution, like FOG (Free Open source Ghost) or clonezilla, in addition to the current Microsoft (used to be RIS, now WDS/SCCM) or paid offering.