What do I mean?  In Windows there’s a set of tools available that lets you build a reference computer with all the latest updates, pre-installed drivers and software and your own configurations.  Then you strip out all the bits that make it a unique computer such as user profiles and their associated passwords, unique computer identifiers and so on.  At the end of this you have a reference install of Windows that you can take an image of and deploy to other computers.  The first time you boot on a new computer it goes through some basic setup stuff and away you go.

Because I run a computer business that sells (and services) Apple computers I’ve been looking for a way to achieve the same sort of thing.  What follows in this article is the results of a some in-depth research and putting together bits and pieces from various sources.

My result is a disk image (.dmg) file that I can use to restore on any current version of Mac hardware (laptop and desktop – although untested on a Mac Pro) that will have a user environment I’ve already configured and with additional software that I’d like available.  It hasn’t got any pre-existing users created but runs the standard Apple welcome/setup process when first booted up instead – that way you get to create a new user profile for the new owner of the computer.

So, the process…

1. Create a default install of Mac OS X:

Using a current Apple system create a new install – if it’s a brand new (never used) computer, feel free to use that – of Snow Leopard.  When you get to the Welcome screens set up an admin user (for the purposes of this article, I’ll call this user tismyadmin).

Don’t skip out on setting a password for this user, it’s easier to make some of the later steps work if this user has a password set.  However, keep this password nice and short, by the time you’re done, you’ll be deleting this user again anyway so good security isn’t a necessity here.

2. System Updates:

After the system is logged in, apply all available updates from Apple.  Keep checking until you’ve got all updates (sometimes this might require a restart then checking for more updates).  Also, remember that if you later install other software from a CD or DVD that you may then need to download updates for this software as well.  If you’re doing this a lot you might prefer to manually download Combo updates.

3. Install Software:

Install any additional software you want to be included in your standard Snow Leopard install (e.g. Adium, Skype, VLC, Handbrake, etc).  This is basically just any software that you want to be available to a person using the computer.  Don’t worry about configuring any of this software yet, just get it all installed.

4. Create a New User:

Add a new user to the system (I’ll call this user defaultuser).  Make sure they’re an Administrator for the system.  As with your other user account, set a simple password for this user.

As with tismyadmin, you’re not particularly concerned with top security on this one.  By the time you’re done, this user also gets deleted.

5. Configure the User Account:

Restart and log in as defaultuser.

Go through System Preferences and set everything the way you want it.

Start each program, particularly if they’ve been downloaded from the Internet, and make sure the start up normally and with no warnings.  Unless you have specific configurations that you want to be defaults for an application (e.g. web browser download directory) don’t set configurations in applications.

DO NOT enter any usernames and passwords for programs – ultimately, they’ll end up saved as a default user profile and be available to every user on every computer you deploy this image to (i.e. this is a bad thing™).  If you have programs that you want to load on startup/login, set them here also.

6. Clean Up:

Clear caches on the defaultuser account – using Finder go to /Users/defaultuser/Library/Caches and delete the contents.  Make sure you empty the Trash (this might require you to restart and log in again as defaultuser).

Run Keychain Access (Applications/Utilities), select “login” and delete (from File menu).

Clear histories (Apple symbol -> Recent Items -> Clear Menu).

7. Set Up System-wide Default User Account:

Restart the computer and log in as tismyadmin.

Run Terminal (Applications/Utilities) and type “sudo -s” and enter your password for tismyadmin when prompted.

NOTE:  This is now a root shell, tread carefully!  You can do serious damage messing around at this level if you’re not sure what you’re doing.

Clear out the existing system-wide default account:

rm -rf /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/*

(I found this sometimes didn’t work as expected and I needed to remove each individual sub-folder separately, check that English.lproj is empty after this step and delete anything left as needed.)

Copy your new default account to the system default account:

cp -R /Users/defaultuser/* /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj

At this point, you’ve now got the start of a system-wide default user profile – this is what gets used every time a new user is created on the system, including the first user when you go through the Apple Welcome process on a new computer.

Type “exit” to get out of the root shell and then close Terminal and reboot the computer.

Log in again as tismyadmin.

8. System Cleanup:

Run Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities), select the hard drive and, under the First Aid tab, run “Repair Disk Permissions“.  If you got things right to this point you’ll see a whole stack of information where this fixes permissions for the system-wide default user profile you’ve just copied.  If you miss this step, permissions issues may get in the way when you create a new user later.  Once you’re done, close Disk Utility.

At this point, you can now delete your defaultuser account.  You won’t need it any further.

9. System Cleanup – Part Two (Single User Mode):

Doing this needs you to spend some time using low-level tools in Snow Leopard.  This can have dire consequences if not done right.  You have been warned!

Reboot the computer into single user mode by holding down COMMAND and S while rebooting.  If you’ve done it right, you’ll end up with a black screen that has white writing on it.  There’s no graphical user interface for this, it’s all typing.

Once you’ve got a command prompt, enter the following commands and WATCH to make sure you don’t get any errors – if you get errors, time to figure out what went wrong and fix it before you go any further.

fsck -fy
mount -uw /
launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist &
dscl . -delete /Users/tismyadmin
rm -rf /Users/tismyadmin
rm -rf /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
shutdown -h now

What does this do?  Basically, it gets rid of your tismyadmin user account in an operating system compliant way (no loose ends) and resets the computer to run the Welcome process again.  At the end of this, you tell the computer to shut down because this is safer than letting it try and reboot and missing your chance to do the last step for some reason.

10. Create Your Disk Image:

At this point, you’ve got a computer that’s turned off and is ready to start as a new computer with no existing users but all your configurations and software installs ready to go.

From here, you need to create a disk image of the computer’s hard drive so you can deploy this build to another computer.  For that you’ll need an external hard drive that’s been set up so you can boot from it (there are plenty of references for that out there – I’ll write one myself some day).

Boot from your external hard drive.

Run Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities – although I have this in the dock on the install on my external hard drive).

Select the internal hard drive on the computer and click the “New Image” button.  Give your disk image a name and select somewhere on your external hard drive to save the disk image.  When you’re done, hit the “Save” button and wait for the disk image to create.  This may take quite a bit of time if you’ve installed a lot of software.

When this is done, you’ve now got a disk image of your fresh-minted Snow Leopard install.  In order to make this disk image useable, you also need one final step.  In Disk Utility, go to the “Restore” tab and load your new disk image in the “Source” box.  Then go up to the “Image” menu and select “Scan Image for Restore“.  Again, this process can take a little time but once it’s done, you have a disk image that you can use.

(Note: If you prefer to use Carbon Copy Cloner you can skip this step, I have done it either way but found that Disk Utility gives me a faster overall restore from disk image and, ultimately, in a commercial workshop, time is money so I’ve gone with the faster method.)

11. Using Your Disk Image:

Easy!  Boot from your external hard drive (the same one you have your disk image saved on) and run up Disk Utility.  Select the internal hard drive on the computer you want to build, select the “Restore” tab and then load your disk image in the “Source” box.  Drag and drop the internal hard drive to “Destination” and hit the “Restore” button – away you go.  Some time later you can restart the computer from the internal hard drive and start a normal setup process including the Apple Welcome screens.

(Note: At some point, I’ll add more detailed step-by-step guides for some of this stuff including screen grabs – for now I wanted to record the whole process while it’s fresh in my mind.)

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What do I install?  Pretty much just the file format converters to allow Office 2003 to read files created with Office 2007.

(As an aside, the Office viewers normally only open Office 2003 files but if you install them and then install the converter, they will also read Office 2007 files.)

I’ve worked out an unattended install but for only one install it’s not really all that relevant.

For what it’s worth, this is the unattended install command:

Office2003-FileFormatConverters.exe /quiet /passive /norestart

This article is part of a series dealing with my standard system build.  It starts with this article and the post you’re reading now is directly related to this one.

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A sidebar gadget lives in it’s own separate directory (that might have sub-directories), all the files needed for that gadget live in that directory.  Vista then stores these gadget directories in a number of places, each offering a different level of visibility on the computer.

Some gadgets are stored in

C:Program FilesWindows SidebarGadgets

These are accessible on all user accounts on the computer.  Unfortunately, I’ve yet to find a reasonably reliable way to work around the various security systems that prevent a batch file from putting data into this directory (UAC and other protections exist for copying data into the Program Files directory in Vista).

Gadgets that are only visible to a particular user of a computer are stored in

%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgets

and this directory is far more accessible for a batch file.

While I’d prefer to install my standard gadgets in a globally accessible location, this would require me to have a less automated approach.  The whole idea of an unattended install is to keep it unattended.  Therefore, I’ve chosen, for now, to go with the user profile location for gadgets on the basis that most of the computers we deal with really only have one normal user set up on them anyway.

Microsoft seems to prefer that we don’t download the installers for our sidebar gadgets but, rather, install directly from the web.  This also doesn’t help for a silent install.  While there are undoubtedly other solutions to this problem, in the end I did some experimenting and found that you can just copy the whole directory for an installed gadget to the correct directory on another computer and it will work.

So, I grabbed all my ‘standard’ gadgets out of “%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgets” and then use this command to install to a new computer:

@xcopy ".CPUUtilization v1.2.0.2.Gadget" "%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgetsCPUUtilization v1.2.0.2.Gadget" /e /i /c /q
@xcopy ".DriveInfoByChris.gadget" "%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgetsDriveInfoByChris.gadget" /e /i /c /q
@xcopy ".iWeather.gadget" "%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgetsiWeather.gadget" /e /i /c /q
@xcopy ".MemoryMeter.gadget" "%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgetsMemoryMeter.gadget" /e /i /c /q
@xcopy ".NeptuneDigitalClock.gadget" "%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgetsNeptuneDigitalClock.gadget" /e /i /c /q
@xcopy ".SysShutdown.gadget" "%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgetsSysShutdown.gadget" /e /i /c /q

Once copied, these gadgets can be added to the sidebar normally.  I haven’t tried to automate adding them to the sidebar display yet – mostly because the final step on our build process is running through the Control Panel and finalising some other configuration options as well as doing a QA on the build.  It doesn’t add much to this process to manually add the relevant sidebar gadgets.

(This article is part of a series about the build disc I use to standardise system builds. The series starts here and this particular article follows on from this one.)

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Along with the standard utilities I install, there’s also a selection of little registry hacks that I’ve chosen to standardise on.  I should note that this is by no means an exhaustive list of possibilities.  I’d also note that my agenda here is to keep things relatively “normal looking” for the customer.  As a result, I only really do a few small things that, in my opinion, enhance XP rather than substantially alter how it operates.

Integrating registry changes is fairly simple in XP.  First up, you need the changes saved out to a file (e.g. reghacks.reg).  Here is the one I use.

This file has to have a certain format in order for this to work.  This MS knowledge base article provides details about the syntax of a .reg file and also includes details about how to add, modify and delete registry keys.  This KB article was the basis of my implementation:

regedit /s .InstallersXP_Reg_Hacks.reg

There are heaps of sites that offer registry hacks to achieve different results.  As with many things, Google can be your friend in finding the ones you want.

(This article is part of a series about the build disc I use to standardise system builds. The series starts here and this particular article follows on from this one.)

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This is basically the theme used for Media Centre editions of Windows XP.  At various times, it has been made available for download directly from Microsoft (particularly Microsoft New Zealand who also released some NZ-theme wallpapers).  Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation if you’d like more information.  Currently, most of these links appear not to be working.  The Royale Theme can, however, still be downloaded here.

There are also a number of derivations on Royale (including Royale Noir).  Personally, I haven’t really worried about chasing any of these down.  I’m happy to go with the standard Royale theme.

I usually also install the 3D Windows XP screen saver at the same time.  In this case, I’ve extracted just the .scr file and install it using a simple copy command.

The install I use for this eye candy is:

XP_Royale_Theme.exe /S /v/qn
@xcopy .3DWindowsXP.scr %SystemRoot%system32 /q /y

(This article is part of a series about the build disc I use to standardise system builds. The series starts here and this particular article follows on from this one.)

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Microsoft released a series of small utilities for Windows XP under the banner of PowerToys.  They don’t seem to have an equivalent for Vista so I only install these on Windows XP.

The actual tools I’ve chosen to install are:

• ClearType PowerToy – adds a control panel applet to set/tweek ClearType settings.  Now that most computers use LCD monitors this is a valuable tool to have around.
• TaskSwitch PowerToy – changes the ALT-TAB task switch functionality to add a slightly more graphical interface.  This is certainly nothing like what can be achieved under Vista but is at least a little more intuitive than the standard capability in XP.

Microsoft’s PowerToys are available here.

For the two tools I install, this is how I do it:

XP_ClearTypePowerToy.exe /S /v/qn
XP_TaskSwitchPowerToy.exe /S /v/qn

(This article is part of a series about the build disc I use to standardise system builds. The series starts here and this particular article follows on from this one.)

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CrossLoop forms part of the customer support strategy I use in the business.  It lets us do a remote desktop connection to a customer computer using, essentially, a custom VNC client.  The biggest advantage is that CrossLoop seems to be able to navigate through NAT routers and firewalls with ease.  I plan to write a full article later on the use of CrossLoop.  This one just deals with achieving a silent install.

The download for CrossLoop is here.

My unattended install works like this:

crossloopsetup.exe /VERYSILENT /SP-

(This article is part of a series about the build disc I use to standardise system builds. The series starts here and this particular article follows on from this one.)

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Vista has WiMP 11 included so this really only applies to Windows XP. My workshop still does enough work on Windows XP to warrant inclusion of this package – if only on the basis of reducing the Windows Update downloads.

The download for WiMP v11 is here.

The install command I use is:

XP_WiMP11.exe /Q:A /C:”SETUP_WM.EXE /Q:A /R:N /P:#e”

I believe I originally obtained this particular setup out of an one of the last working AutoPatcher downloads before Microsoft rained on their parade.  There’s quite possibly a more recent version now but this still works, and, in combination with Heise Offline Updates covers my requirements. YMMV.

(This article is part of a series about the build disc I use to standardise system builds. The series starts here and this particular article follows on from this one.)

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A nice little free tool from Microsoft that lets you synchronise data between your computer and a USB pen drive (actually, it will work between other directories too).

The most recent version I can find is SyncToy v2.0 which can be downloaded here.

The silent install for SyncToy is:

SyncToySetup.msi /passive /norestart

(This article is part of a series about the build disc I use to standardise system builds. The series starts here and this particular article follows on from this one.)

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The silent installers setup on my build disc includes Firefox which has it’s own toolbar-based search capability (Google included).  Installing the toolbar for Internet Explorer keeps all bases covered no matter what browser might be in use at the time.

In this case, Google is actually pretty helpful.  What you’ll need is Google Toolbar for the Enterprise.  This is freely available from Google and includes an MSI file and documentation on how to implement it.

For my purposes, this was all that was needed:

GoogleToolbarInstaller.msi /passive /norestart

(This article is part of a series about the build disc I use to standardise system builds. The series starts here and this particular article follows on from this one.)

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