Customers often want to include a subscription to a Prism Channel on new computers before they are given to employees. Their goal is to get the Prism Deploy Client installed and subscribed to their Channel so that the computers will appear in the Channel as soon as they are put on the network. Often this process involves "imaging" a system with an approved configuration (using a product such as Ghost), then using Microsoft's Sysprep to give the imaged systems unique security identifiers, computer names, domain membership, etc. Administrators want the new computers to appear in the Channel with their permanently-assigned name.

Here are the recommended steps for accomplishing this.

1. Add the approved "reference image" system to the desired Channel by doing a direct install over the network by browsing either the Active Directory tree or Microsoft Windows Network tree within the Prism Console. Alternately, manually run a subscription file on the reference system. When you create the subscription file, you can choose whether the system should appear in the Channel using its NetBios name or its Active Directory name.

2. Once the Prism Deploy Client has been installed on the reference system, stop the client so that it is no longer polling the Prism Server. There are two ways to do this. The first (and best) way is to open the Services control panel, locate the Prismxl service and STOP it. This will gracefully stop the two running instances of ptclient.exe along with prismxl.sys process. The second way to stop the Prism client is by running the following command on a on Start\Run line: PTclient.exe /qc PRDXXXXXXXXXX. PRDXXXXXXXXXX is your product's serial number. In versions earlier that Prism Suite 9, you don't need to add the serial number.

3. Launch regedit on the reference system and browse to "HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Lanovation\Prism Deploy\Channels". There will be a GUID subkey for the Channel the computer joined in Step 1. Within this subkey, delete the following six registry values  "Data", "Last Valid Target Name", "Last Valid Target Number", "Last Valid Target Ident", "Last Active Directory Computer Name" and "Last Successful Poll." These entries will automatically be regenerated when the Prism client next starts. The reference system is now ready to be used to clone other systems. Important: Don't relaunch the client Prism on the reference system (either manually, by rebooting or by logging in) after step 2 or 3, because that would cause the deleted registry values to be regenerated.

4. After a new PC has been cloned, use Sysprep to accomplish final configuration (naming the computer, setting up the administrator password, adding it to the domain, etc.). The computer may appear in the Channel with a temporary name, but after another reboot the temporary name will be replaced with the system's name.