So I have quite a bit of experience building computers and installing Windows. For myself, for family members, etc. The one thing I have never done is set it up so the new owner of the system is asked to create an account when they first turn it on.
What I'd like to do is make an account just to set everything up, install software, install updates, whatever, then when I am done delete the account and set it so on the next boot a new user is created. Is this possible? What would this be called?
A mac?
There are system builder copies of windows, you mean something like that?
Are they incapable of following the steps and downloading things themselves?
@noenken I suppose it would be a system builder or OEM license, as the computer is an older Lenovo ThinkCentre with a Windows 7 Pro key on it. Not sure what that means, though. I'll do some research.
@_hill Absolutely. This is going to be for an older pastor at a local church. The system needs to be idiot proof, essentially. Not saying he's an idiot, but he most likely isn't technically savvy.
Uh you should be able to ask what their MS acc is or make a local one and just show him how to change the password
I thought about this quite a bit the last month or so. I just had to make around 75 laptops for donations at work, and thought it would be nice for the recipient to be able to create their own account when they receive the laptop. Like what would happen when you buy a new laptop. The way it is now is they get a laptop with our internal asset tag number as a user account name and computer name. Pretty impersonal. There's got to be a way to do it.
edit: My guess is it has something to do with Windows AIK: https://technet.microsoft.com/library/dd349348.aspx
It is called the "Out of the box User Experience" or "OOBE." It would be better to just give them the finished computer all set up. But anyway...
The Microsoft supported way to do this is to put the computer in audit mode.
There are a myriad of ways to do this like setup.xml answer files that can be created with the SIM (installed from the ADK). Note that you will need the install.wim of whatever version of windows you are trying to install available in order to create a package listing for it prior to creating the answer file.
Answer files contain many cryptic options. There are also some online services that will try to create the answer file for you, assuming you know which version of windows you will be installing.
Anyway, that is too much work, error prone and overly complicated. So instead I usually install Windows into a VM, sysprep it, capture the image, image the target computer with that captured.wim, dism /add-drivers and then boot it using skip_oobe.xml or w/e.
So your options here are to:
Syspreping the image on the real hardware is just asking for trouble.
A better alternative to 2, would be to sysprep the computer to enter OOBE on next boot and install the drivers manually onto the target system after imaging it, prior to first boot using dism /image:c: /add-driver. But that sorta requires that you know what you are doing.
If you skip the driver setup, don't expect the wifi and all of the random hardware on the system to work.
But anyway... It would be better to just give them the finished computer all set up. Just rename their user account to what they want it as.