Description of the Windows XP Corporate Deployment tools and documentation

System administrators can use the Windows XP Corporate Deployment tools to help them to install Windows XP on multiple computers. The Windows XP Corporate Deployment tools contain updates to Setup Manager, the Sysprep utility, and related documentation. The Windows XP Corporate Deployment tools are available in the Deploy.cab file on the Windows XP CD-ROM and Windows XP service pack CD-ROMs in the Support\Tools folder. Administrators can also download the latest Windows XP Corporate Deployment tools. To download the tools, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

The Windows XP Corporate Deployment tools contain the following tools and documentation:

• Deploy.chm: This is the "Microsoft Windows Corporate Deployment Tools User's Guide" documentation.
• Ref.chm: This is the "Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Reference" documentation.
• Factory.exe, Setupcl.exe, and Sysprep.exe: These are the Sysprep components. Sysprep is a tool that prepares the hard disk on a source computer for duplication on other computers with the same hard disks.
• Oformat.com: This is a command-line tool to create a volume that uses the FAT32 file system. The tool creates a FAT32 volume with clusters that are aligned in an optimal way for later conversion to the NTFS file system.
• Cvtarea.exe: This is a command-line tool to create files and to analyze the placement of those files on a volume that uses the FAT32 or FAT file system. You can use this tool to create a contiguous file in a specific location on the disk. This may be useful if your manufacturing processes requires you to format a hard disk with the FAT or FAT32 file system before you convert the hard disk to the NTFS file system. You can use the Cvtarea tool to create a reserved, contiguous, placeholder file that is to be used for the NTFS metadata files after the conversion. This causes the resulting file system to be less fragmented and more efficient.
• Setupmgr.exe: This is the Setup Manager Wizard. You can use this to create or to modify the files that control an unattended Setup.
• Readme.txt: This is the Readme documentation for the Windows XP Corporate Deployment tools.