When I joined the IT team at a corporate headquarters, one of my first tasks was learning the reimaging process. We had a long counter lined with 12 to 18 laptops at a time, and the process went something like this: Go to Intune, delete the device record, enrollment record, and Azure AD record Walk to the laptop, boot from a Windows 11 USB installer, perform a clean install Wait. Perform all Windows Updates — drivers too — while the device is unmanaged Walk back to the laptop, run a PowerShell script to capture the hardware hash, which exports to a CSV on a USB drive Walk back to your desk, manually upload the CSV to Intune to recreate the enrollment record Walk back to the laptop, initiate Autopilot pre-provisioning Wait for provisioning to complete Reseal the laptop, put it on the shelf Start to finish: roughly 6 hours per batch , assuming no hiccups. And there were always hiccups. Something Felt Off A few things didn't sit right with me from the start.…