### Windows on Your Mind

Configuring multiple workstations exactly the same presents some problems with a Windows 95 or Windows NT workstation, which maintains configuration information for all of the workstation's hardware and software in the registry. Many registry settings are unique for each workstation because these workstations have different configurations, static IP addresses, and workstation names. As a result, you must ensure that you maintain unique registry settings when you replicate an image file from a Windows 95 or Windows NT workstation to multiple workstations.

LabExpert 2.21 includes two utilities that help you overcome registry problems: Windows Registry Manager and SIDgen.

WINDOWS REGISTRY MANAGER
You can avoid registry problems by replicating an image file from a Windows 95 or Windows NT workstation, with the original registry files, to every workstation on the network. Windows 95 or Windows NT discovers any configuration differences and updates the registry accordingly. You then need to manually enter any unique registry settings for each workstation.

Manually configuring the registry for multiple workstations can be time consuming. After completing this task, however, you can use Windows Registry Manager to archive each workstation's registry, and you can store these archives on the server. You need to archive each workstation's registry only once: From then on, you can recreate any workstation's configuration by replicating an image file to multiple workstations and restoring the archived registry to these workstations.

Windows Registry Manager even simplifies the process of manually configuring the registry on multiple workstations. With Windows Registry Manager, you can create a .REG file for each workstation that contains only the unique registry settings. You can then import the .REG file into each workstation's registry.

SIDGEN
If you are using Windows NT, you can take advantage of a utility called SIDgen, which ensures that each Windows NT server and workstation has a unique security identifier (SID). (SIDgen works only with Windows NT because Windows 95 does not use SIDs.) Because Windows NT distinguishes these servers and workstations by their SID, duplicate SIDs could cause serious conflicts.

SIDgen makes a backup copy of a workstation's registry and generates a unique SID for this workstation. SIDgen then searches all registry hives, replacing them with the newly generated SID. Next, SIDgen scans the Windows NT file system, changing this file system's entries to reflect the newly generated SID. (All security entries should still list the same users and groups, and all user preferences should remain intact.) The workstation is then rebooted.

You can also use SIDgen to change a Windows NT workstation's name. As a result, SIDgen is a great complement to ImageBlaster Pro for configuring multiple Windows NT workstations.