Maintaining a 32 and 64 bit Window 7 Image.

General_Win

Long story short, our company can't move to Windows 7 64 just yet as 2 key things don't work.

First we have a company that is managing all our printers and they don't have proper 64bit support just yet. Features like duplexing won't work.

Secondly our Juniper VPN software also doesn't work in 64 bit and that's the killer as it lets people work from home.

So while I can create and manage two images, 1 32bit and 1 64, I'd rather not.



Right now I create and manage our 32bit XP image using Virtual PC and MDT2010.


Any ideas?

Mustachio Jones

Are you using machines that take advantage of a 64bit OS? If no, then there still isn't a ton of reason to move up from 32bit.

Having just recently built a Windows 7 image for a school district using Ghost Solution Suite 2.5.1, it's kind of a pain. Basically, the answer is that the 32bit and 64bit versions of Windows 7 are mutually exclusive. I don't know the specifics of how you're going about it, but it comes down to the fact that you can't upgrade a 32bit version with a 64bit and vice versa. They're incompatible. Windows 7 is designed to be able to both push and pull generalized images, but only insofar as drivers. I made my Win7 image on an HP laptop and successfully pushed it to a Toshiba tablet. Same operating system version, though.

General_Win

I would say that most people probably wouldn't need it, but the people that do would definitely be able take advantage of more RAM etc.

Tons people do development on their laptops, this includes running Oracle, MS SQL Server, and MySQL, tons of virtual PC. So more ram is good.

Also if you want a solution that can accommodate many different models of computers have a look at MTD2010. Just incase your school decides to up and get many different models of PCs and have driver problems.

Gihgehls

Upgrade to 64 bit, use VMware or virtual PC to run 32bit stuff? Would that work?

Captain Vash

I feel like there's some obvious reason that this won't work.. but doesn't 64bit windows 7 have a fully functional 32bit compatibility mode?

amnesiasoft

Captain Vash wrote: »

I feel like there's some obvious reason that this won't work.. but doesn't 64bit windows 7 have a fully functional 32bit compatibility mode?

64 bit Windows is capable of running 32 bit programs, but it can not run 32 bit drivers.

General_Win

I was going to test out virtualizing the 32 bit stuff, but then we'd have to make sure that the XP VM has a virus scanner is up to date it might be an option, but it might be more of a pain in the ass.

I guess it really comes down to what is less of a pain in the ass.

HydroSqueegee

it really boils down to if your users need more than 4gigs of ram. 98% of user dont and typically only devs or engineers need more.

If you do have a small user base with 64bit needs, maintain an image with identical apps and deploy only on systems with more than 4gig o ram.

Mustachio Jones

How often are you updating and reimaging the machines? If it's like once a year, then updating the images every years isn't so bad.

General_Win

Nah it would be at the very least, once a month. With our XP one we "went live" with it a couple months ago and we're still tweaking and adding improvements.

We reimage about 10 time a week so its worth it. Spend an hour updating and recapturing, save hours in not having to do updates.