Creating custom windows install

[Zirax]

I have a copy of xp64 that I have not yet installed. I've looked at nlite but this works on your current install of windows and then creates an install cd. What would be really handy would be if you took a vanilla xp cd, then put the updates on it as well as handy drivers.

Has anyone heard of anything that does it this way?

[Flibster]

I thought that nlite did this....

You copy the contents to a new folder - pointed Nlite at that, dropped all the service packs and updates into another, it merges them into a custom image.

been a looong time since I used it though.

[Mark]

Yes. And you'll be surprised to hear it's called nlite. :)

I've never used nlite in the way you suggest it works (not saying it doesn't work that way too because maybe it does). I have used it to make a custom XP image from a pair of XP MCE CDs though (something of a godsend given XP setup's lack of AHCI drivers).

[Zirax]

Hmmm ok I shall investigate further tomorrow evening.

[Stan_Lite]

I used nlite to slipstream SP2 into XP back in the day.

IIRC, it works pretty much as Flibster said. You copy the contents of your Windows CD to a folder, point nlite at it, tell it what to remove and what to add and it should automagically do the business.

Been a long time since I used it too. Might actually get it to slipstream SP1 into Vista for future installs.

[Zirax]

Aha! Got it now, wasn't entirely with it late last night. I have had another look and you can even point it at windows update and it gets it all automatically o/

Cracking stuff, it'll save about an hour of pulling down updates post sp2.

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The final uber ness would be putting office 2003 on there as part of the windows install (hey, i'm lazy).

[Davey_Pitch]

You can certainly get it to put stuff like Office on there as well, any installs you like in fact. I remember reading a guide on it that explained exactly how to do it. Want me to dig it out for you?

[Zirax]

If you can that would be great, their guide on the website is a little lacking

[Davey_Pitch]

The various guides on this site should hopefully tell you all you need to know. I *may* have been mistaken that you can put it all on the one disk, I've not had time to go through the site fully to see if I was right or not, but there's plenty of info there :)

http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/

[Stan_Lite]

I'm fairly sure you can slipstream all sorts of good stuff on there - not sure what nlite can do but can see no reason why it wouldn't. Will have to have a play with it when I get home and try to make a one-off install disc so that I can quickly install everything I need when I build new Folding rigs.

[divine]

I love nlite.
I remember messing around to see just how small i could make a CD and install footprint on an old PC, you'd be surprised how much total crap you can strip from XP and have it still work fine!

[Feek]

I use nlite along with the Windows Update Downloader (http://wud.jcarle.com/) to sort out the updates and shoehorn them in.

[Stan_Lite]

I love nlite.
I remember messing around to see just how small i could make a CD and install footprint on an old PC, you'd be surprised how much total crap you can strip from XP and have it still work fine!

I'm going to do that with XP pro to put on the Eee. I've ordered 2Gb RAM for it so I can do away with the swap file altogether and I want to strip down XP to the bare minimum so that I can have Office and other stuff on there I'll need without pushing the 4Gb SSD too close to the limit. Storage will be on 16Gb SD cards.

[Mark]

Didn't know you could easily slipstream in Windows Updates, otherwise I'd have done it with my XP MCE CD rebuild. :)

[MarcLister]

I used nlite to slipstream SP2 into XP back in the day.

IIRC, it works pretty much as Flibster said. You copy the contents of your Windows CD to a folder, point nlite at it, tell it what to remove and what to add and it should automagically do the business.

Been a long time since I used it too. Might actually get it to slipstream SP1 into Vista for future installs.It's called vLite. nLite for XP/2000 and vLite for Vista. :D

Aha! Got it now, wasn't entirely with it late last night. I have had another look and you can even point it at windows update and it gets it all automatically o/

Cracking stuff, it'll save about an hour of pulling down updates post sp2.

-----------------
The final uber ness would be putting office 2003 on there as part of the windows install (hey, i'm lazy).I use the RyanVMupdate pack. Ryan took a break last year but has just returned. :D

http://www.ryanvm.net/msfn/updatepack-sp2.html

Download that and integrate it into nLite and your copy of XP is pretty up-to-date patch wise. :D

[Zirax]

Thanks all. It seems that you can slipstream the office 2003 cds onto an office cd with the same for windows. My plan of creating the uber windows install seems to have stopped though, I was thinking office, avg, zonealarm, ati drivers all installed via one cd.

Still I am getting everything together to do one big install, it saves a lot of time waiting for windows to update

[MarcLister]

Thanks all. It seems that you can slipstream the office 2003 cds onto an office cd with the same for windows. My plan of creating the uber windows install seems to have stopped though, I was thinking office, avg, zonealarm, ati drivers all installed via one cd.

Still I am getting everything together to do one big install, it saves a lot of time waiting for windows to updateThat is my holy grail of computing. Being able to install XP + updates + programs. :D

[LeperousDust]

vLite doesn't work with SP1 yet, because Microsoft have released a distribution version or whatever.

[Zirax]

Well putting the cd together wasn't that bad really. What was painful was extracting the driver .inf files from the various installers. Now thats done I have a complete build cd that will work entriely without prompting and build from scratch.

Then I found out that I need to upgrade the bios before the machine will post with this new intel chip :/