At work, I find myself formatting and reinstalling Windows on quite a few machines. The actual setup and driver installation isn't bad, but extra steps I have to take due to our company's checklist (it's a standard of quality thing...) take alot of time, such as 2 rounds of Windows updates and reinstalling apps such as Adobe Reader, Java, Directx, Adaware, Defender, jZip, etc.

We have Acronis True Image, and I got to thinking. 99% of machines I see have XP Pro and Home. We use OEM discs when we reinstall. So here's a plan I pulled together:

1. I reloaded any system, installed updates, installed the apps(Adobe, Java, etc.), and then uninstalled any driver specific to that system(NIC, video, etc.).

2. Delete the windows file that holds the product key to deactivate it.

3. Make an Acronis image of this updated installation and save it on a flash drive.

4. Use Acronis bootdisc to clone this fresh, update Windows image from the flash drive to the hard drive of any computer that needs to be reinstalled.

5. After it's done imaging, just enter a product key, activate, install drivers, and DONE.

My question is: will this work like I want it to? I'll have separate images for each type of XP, of course (Pro and Home).