On Mar 24, 10:08 pm, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> __/ [ Paul Cassel ] on Sunday 25 March 2007 02:34 \__
>
> > John A. Bailo wrote:
> >> Does anyone know how Dell pre-installs Vista.
Actually, Roy isn't too for off.
> > It's done by prison labor one machine at a time from the CD.
> Just like production of Vista CDs in Costa Rica,
Normally, part of the "burn in testing" is to copy a pattern to the
hard drive, and then read the pattern and confirm that what you wrote
is what you got back. The OEM can request the pattern, which is often
the image from a master "image" hard drive. The pattern is copied and
used as part of the test process. The drive manufacturer installs the
software, and uses it to run the verification tests. If the disk
passes the tests, then it's ready to ship. Typically OEMs order
several thousand, or even a million or so drives which can be
installed.
Some smaller manufacturers have their own "mastering machine" which
can be used to image copy from the master drive to the client drive.
For many years, if you wanted to buy a machine that didn't have
Windows licensed and preinstalled, you had to purchase it without a
hard drive. This was often called "Bare Bones", and usually only
included the Motherboard, CPU, RAM, and CD-ROM. The drive was added
by the client, or in the shop.
Corporate sites typically get a backup similar to this core image,
which can also be copied, usually over a local area network, using
what amounts to a self-starting version of MS-DOS, FreeDOS, or Linux,
similar to a Ghost or TrueImage backup.
The copy is done, the CD is removed, and the next boot "registers" the
machine with the internal corporate server.
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