HP machines + recovery disk backup..

[nihilist]

Yo.

We bought a bunch of HP machines .. too lazy to walkt ot he other end of the world to find the model numbers, but anyway, they all want me to do the backup of the recovery partition - now generally I never bother with this as I do all my XP installs DIY. But since damagement would get a nice boner if I did this and showed them.. question.

Would I need to make a backup for each PC? Or can I do one and use the same disk to restore them (unlikely as I said I DIY).. I'm not sure about the XP licenses.. I know with my Thinkpad the license is a pre-activated one that requires no activation and AFAIk is a generic install with the same codes for all Thinkpads of that model.

 

[LazyLion]

If the machines are identical, then you can get away with only making one disc.

Check if the license stickers are attached to each machine... and if they are then you might want to write them down (if the machines are stolen at least you have the license keys written down).

You should do one re-install to see what happens

If it asks for you to type in the license key, then you are safe with just the one backup disc and the copies you made of each license.

If the license key is not asked for (pre-inserted), then you are going to have to make a different backup for each machine.

If you are a serious IT supervisor you would not even be asking this question, you would have just gone ahead and done a backup for each machine. If you like your job, don't take chances.