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IRIS

Instructional & Research Information Systems

Installing OS

Preliminaries

BEFORE YOU BEGIN YOUR INSTALLATION

  1. Make sure there is nothing on your system that you want to keep (see Backing up files). Contact your system administrator if you need assistance.
  2. Make sure your system meets the minimum hardware requirements:
  3. Go to the IRIS Network Page to fill out a “Register a new system” form, or an “Update a system” form, as appropriate. All systems on the IRIS networks must be registered. All Windows machines on DHCP-aware subnets are required to be DHCP clients. There are no exceptions to this policy; if you require a fixed IP we can configure the DHCP server to assign one to your system, given a reasonable justification. For registration, you will need the hardware Ethernet address of your system. To determine the hardware Ethernet address of your machine in Windows, run this command at the command prompt: ipconfig -all The ‘Physical Address’ field is the one you want; it looks like: 00-50-04-B5-84-D3

If you wish to do a Network install of Windows, you will need to use the IRIS wired network, not wireless. Be sure to register your wired network Ethernet address, and indicate an appropriate Cable ID on the registration form.

When support for your system has begun you will receive mail from IRIS admins indicating that you may begin the install process. You may install Windows using Network installation (recommended), the Windows Install Disk or USB available at the Helpdesk, or your own copy of the OS.

Windows Notes

BITLOCKER

Recent versions of Windows allow users to encrypt individual files and folders (under the Advanced Properties for that file or folder). Bitlocker, available with Windows Enterprise, provides a way of encrypting entire disk volumes, which laptop users may find valuable. Using Bitlocker requires authentication during startup, with the help of some combination of:

  • a cryptographic hardware chip called a Trusted Platform Module
  • a PIN entered by the user at startup
  • a startup key stored on a USB device

Please note that forgotten PINs and lost startup keys or USB devices may result in disk volumes that cannot be un-encrypted — for example, your laptop may no longer be bootable, and any data on it will be unrecoverable. One can use LastPass or similar to store PINs or Recovery Keys as secure notes, so you can retain quick and easy access. We also support storage of Bitlocker Recovery Keys in Active Directory.

See also:

USER ACCOUNT CONTROL (UAC)

Windows comes with a feature called User Account Control (UAC), which is designed to help prevent certain kinds of security breaches. Whenever a user that is a member of the local administrators group tries to perform a task that requires administrative privileges, the operating system halts the operation and prompts the user to acknowledge it prior to running the task.

UAC is disabled in some of our early WDS and DVD Windows images. This may be changed as we make ongoing updates to the images.

Although UAC improves the security on Windows, under some scenarios you may wish to disable it (for example, when giving demonstrations in front of an audience). You may be tempted to disable UAC because of the additional mouse clicking it requires; however, we recommend not to immediately do so, and to try to get used to UAC instead.

If you do wish to disable UAC, you may do so via the User Accounts control panel. UAC can also be disabled by launching MSCONFIG from the Run menu, going to the Tools tab, selecting Disable UAC and clicking the Launch button.

ACTIVATING WINDOWS

Within a few days after installing Windows, you must activate Windows by communicating with our KMS (Key Management Service); otherwise, Windows may present a black screen and refuse to complete your login.

If on campus networks, Windows may activate automatically and transparently. Under the properties of This PC, you should see “Windows is Activated”. If Windows does not auto-activate for you, read on.

Installations from our volume-licensed version of Windows can be activated as follows:

  1. Start with being on a campus network, or using the campus VPN.
  2. Double-check that your computer’s clock has the time set correctly. If necessary, click on the clock in your system tray, and choose Change date and time settings… to fix it.
  3. Go to Start -> This PC, but right-click on it, and choose Properties.
  4. Near the bottom of the window, under “Windows activation,” click on the link to Activate Windows now.
  5. After a minute or two, Windows should now be activated! Note that Windows will need to check in with the campus KMS server periodically, in order to maintain activation under our volume license.

If the above steps don’t work, you can attempt activation using our executable, activatewin7.exe. You may find activatewin7.exe on the install DVDs for Windows 7, as well as on WINSWW.