Anyone in IT want to play Mentor for the day ?

Hi everyone,
I hope it's ok to post this here, I'm flailing around and need a little help.

Back story:
I'm studying IT Cert 3 - Support.
I'm doing the course by correspondance which in theory sounded like a great idea.
Unfortunately, all of the course materials are outdated (Vista's the greatest) and the teachers are a little hard to pin down for any kind of support.

I've Googled 'til my fingers are almost bleeding but this particular task is not really something that's covered under general info.

So, I was wondering if any of you guys had a few minutes spare to help me out with it.

Scenario:
High School location with 60 networked PCs running Windows 2000.
I've been contracted to upgrade the whole lot to Win 7 Pro.

Assuming this would include hardware upgrades as well (course material doesn't say what the shool has in place) and that it would have to be clean installs all around (from what I've read you can't do a direct upgrade from win 2000) so I get to back up each system too.

This is where I get stuck.
I now have to do an implementation plan and I have absolutely no idea how many staff to use or how long something like this would take.

Can anyone shed any light on what a job like this would entail ?

Thanks.

 

I would think that more information is necessary, there is such a huge gap between 7 and 2000, hardware is going to be a big issue.
Assuming the question has to be answered within the confines of the information given, (since they don't give hardware info, I would just state that not enough information was given to address that issue) . With windows 7 you can just install , and all old media and other files will be found in windows.old , no backup steps are necessary-the installation does this automatically. 7 Installs faster than any previous Windows version I have installed .
How many install disks have you been given in the hypothetical situation ?

 

Thank you so much for the response.

Thanks for reminding me about the windows.old file.
I've got that on my system from a re-install, one of those things I knew was there but didn't really know what it was for.
I'll do some more reading on it.

As far as I'm aware there wouldn't be any installation discs in this scenario.
It's an Academic Volume upgrade licence and Win7 Pro would be downloaded from the VLSC.
Multiple serial numbers issued to match the number of PCs.

As for the hardware, I'm going to assume that it was updated at some point in the past and is sufficient to install win7 pro. :cool

 

Ok let's get you 2 helpers, each person responsible for 20 stations. Each person begin downloading from VLSC, depending on available bandwidth (not specified) have each person downloading win 7 on as many stations as possible without bandwidth choking your downloads to a crawl . With 2 helpers, I think this could be done in a day, though it may be a long day, largely dependent on available bandwidth . There will be much running from station to station to check on progress/prompts .
I would also assume hardware is sufficient to handle win 7 since this was also not specified in the question .
This is how > I < would do it, but I can most certainly tell you someone else here may have a better solution !
Let's hope a real pro will chime in with some advice for you !

 

Well, you've just made my day.
I was thinking it would take a lot longer than that.

Thanks heaps for your help, greatly appreciated.

 

The school district i have done some tech work for using an ghost based system can reimage a 20 computer lab entirely in 45 minutes. Its all about the networks bandwidth tho, we have gigabyte to each machine, and fiber between buildings. Also as far as prompts and such, use a image that has all ready been prepped with the the needed software, that makes it way easier, then you dont' have to go machine to machine to install things like office/flash/java and so on.

 

Thanks for jumping in on this, any info is greatly appreciated.

 

*I am not in IT, just how I would do it*

I was thinking doing it with a image also but- that rules out any backing that would happen. Maybe start off with a script that goes and copies %appdata% and any known directories that need saved: My documents, etc. Since we are talking a school, are these office computers or student computers? If students I would imagine that are using deep freeze or some such and in that case backing up would not apply.

 

most schools every is saved to a file server that actually gets backed up, as oppesed to local machines, i didn't even think that they would allow students to store to a local machine.

 

I think you should be studying Desktop deployment.

 

That's one of things I was trying to work out.
I thought I'd have to split the install into 2 seperate procedures, 1 for staff and admin PCs and the other for the student PCs that probably only have a few basic programs for the kids to use.
Then again, I may be overthinking the whole thing which I admit I have a habit of doing.

I'm going to attack the implentation plan tonight and see if I can put it all together.

Thanks again to everyone for your input.

 

Ok, you guys type too fast.

Thanks for the link Satrow, I was browsing through that site last night but missed that section somehow.
I did come across USMT and wasted about 2 hours reading that.
Well, maybe not wasted but not really what I need right now.

Thanks.

 

Awesome. I was hoping some more knowledgeable people would speak up. Thanks you guys ! Best of luck to you Blaze !

 

Thought I'd give you guys a quick update.

Assignment submitted and *Distinction* received. :dancer

Thanks again for your help.

 

awesome !