Well, by golly, we didn't realize that. Specifically, Microsoft issued this claim in Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q162001, "Do Not Disk Duplicate Installed Versions of Windows NT ," on March 28, 1997. And, just to get it from the horse's mouth, so to speak, I contacted Russ Madlener of Microsoft. Madlener is the product manager for Memphis, and he confirmed that Microsoft does indeed frown on disk duplication as a method of installing NT.

Microsoft does not specifically forbid installation by disk duplication. It does, however, consider it unsupported and will not answer support questions on systems that have been installed via duplication. Madlener cited two reasons for Microsoft's stance on this issue.

First, the System Identification (SID) number is set during installation, and presently, Microsoft does not rely on the SID being unique, but Madlener indicates that will probably not be true in the future.

Second, Microsoft feels that vendors allow too much variability in their desktop systems for disk duplication to work flawlessly. He noted th at a given model desktop computer might have different hard drives or system BIOSes under the hood. Microsoft wants NT to hav e the opportunity to detect these differences.

Mastering the Obvious There are two obvious and reasonable forces at work here, and they clearly need to resolve their differences. Microsoft, on one hand, wants to make sure that NT is installed properly and that every system gets a unique ID number. IT folks think about rolling out 1,000 or so machines, and realize that if one operating system takes two hours to install, they'll have wasted one employee-year of time just installing operating systems, to say nothing of the applications. Clearly, this is one of those things that contributes so heavily to the cost of ownership for desktop PCs in enterprise networks. With wages, consumables and benefits, the cost of the desktop system goes up $60 to $100 just to install the OS.

Microsoft's best suggestion is that disk duplicators install the operating system only to the point where the graphical installation will run. Then the graphical installation can run and use the unattend.txt file for proces sing instructions. From the folks whom we've talked to who install NT machines by the score, this answer is marginally acceptable. It's better than running the entire installation procedure from start to finish.

Network computer (NC) and Javastation vendors should be beating Microsoft over the head with this fact, and Microsoft should do everything possible to simplify and speed its installation procedures. Although I agree that the operating system needs to carefully detect the hardware on which it runs, I seriously doubt that the brainy folks in Redmond can't figure out another way to make this happen. Setting the SID seems like a fairly trivial thing, too--it's only a serial number. There has to be an easier way.

These are the sort of battles that will begin to show the chinks in Microsoft's armor. Microsoft can recognize the dilemmas that its customers face and address them quick ly and reasonably, or Microsoft can ignore them and let NC vendors use these issues as a stick with which to beat it. Refusing to provide this service to customers who are only trying to save themselves some time and money is clearly a step in the wrong direction. Delivering some new tools or helping third-party vendors deliver tools to make NT installation quicker and easier would be a step in the right direction.

Art Wittmann can be reached at awittmann@nwc.com.