i have a network running 6 machines, out of whcih one runs slack and the other 5 run winxp. its a small network lab and i need to reinstall windows every other week. is there a image deploying tool i can use that would allow me to sit on my slack box and multicast the images down to the 5 boxes. in essence, what i want to be able to do is, sit on my slack box, issue some commands or maybe even a GUI and be able to reinstall windows or any other apps on those 5 machines, using images. i don't want to sit on those 5 boxes and install windows over and over again. is there something that would help me achieve this ?

TIA

As all window users
Seriously, I would use samba as file server wich share the win XP install image file (made with norton ghost) and I would use the network boot floppy from norton ghost on all the win machines.

Maybe you can play with other thing like network boot but I don't know win XP to how to do that.

thanks for your input. appreciate it. i'll try to play around with it , see what i come up with.

You could always make an image and dd it back to any hard drive to duplicate an installation. Doesnt work very well if the hardware is not the same on the machines.

You can also try: http://g4l.networks-ltd.de/ that's similar to norton ghost but free
And http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/ that's also free but i dunno if you can make images with it.

thanks, i'll definately give it shot!!!i really appreciate all the info