When Windows XP was released in 2001, it was not foreseen that specialized hard drive controllers for a new generation of hard drives would become the norm. As IDE died its slow death, the rise of SATA prevented the venerable floppy drive from going with it. While Vista accepts CDs and flash drives containing SATA drivers, XP recognizes only the dreaded floppy. Adding insult to injury, those lucky few who have a drive and the appropriate disk are met with scores of updates once Windows is installed. Pleasantly, there is a solution to these common irritations known as "slipstreaming."
Once the domain of OEMs, slipstreaming allows a user to bundle newer service packs, updates, drivers or even applications right into the Windows install media. With the recent release of Windows XP Service Pack 3, there has never been a better time to build a disc to suit. In the following pages we'll tailor your old Windows XP CD to reduce its size, install faster, recognize your SATA drives during install and pre-install your favorite applications.
All this customization was made easy by the 2006 release of nLite, which made the cryptic art of slipstreaming broadly accessible. A clever combination of intuitive menus, concise documentation and easy-to-use automation has made it a rapid success. In this feature, we'll be using nLite to help us to customize a US English version of 32-bit Windows XP. Because any good project requires a little prep work, we'll begin the process there.
Getting nLite Ready
Step 1A: Download and install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 SP1
1B: Download and install nLite (v1.4.5 Final at the time of publication)
1C: Lastly, prepare a directory structure as seen in figure 1-1:
Fig. 1-1: Choose an empty folder and create these directories inside of it.
Preparing Items For Integration
Step 2A: Download the Windows XP Service Pack 3 Network Installation Package to the Service Packs directory you created in step 1C. Because nLite will integrate SP3 automatically in later stages of this guide, do not extract or run the executable.
2B: As previously indicated, it is possible to build SATA drivers directly into the Windows CD, thereby averting the need for a floppy drive. These drivers are often difficult to locate, so we have prepared a driver package for the major AMD, Intel and NVIDIA chipsets of recent make. You can download the driver package from our repository and extract it to the drivers folder created in step 1C.
I liked this especially because of the thorough handling of of the drivers and options issues. I remember cobbling together my own slipstreams with Nero- this answers a lot of the questions, gotchas and inconveniences.
Well done, Rob- and thanks.
I do slipstreaming all the time at work. I've always done it the manual way which takes more time and lot of screw ups along the way. When nLite started a few years ago, I tinkered with it but never gave it a serious thought.
Rob (Thrax) has done a great job walking us through the process and, much to my chagrin, made my way of slipstreaming obsolete.
Rob,
You have outdone yourself. That's slick. Shall be following that in the week when I reinstall my desktop (finally!). Cool read
Your article is amazing and very useful. You are the only who puts detail in their article that is actually useful. Keep up the good work.
I used print preview, paged through until I found "about the author" and used that to print out the pages up to that for each web page of the article.
The only problem I had was getting the article printed out without all of the ads & comments. Not finding a print option on the web page
I am asuming that you play Tabula Rasa since your forum name is Thrax. Zarlon is my toon name when I play.
Thank You
Zarlon
No, I don't play TR. My name is actually inspired by a high score on the Autumn Valley track in 1994's The Need for Speed.
I'm very glad I could help you with one of my articles, Zarlon! Thanks for commenting.
I'll poke our web guru with a big stick to see if we can get a "print" button that will render a printable page in the future.
Nice suggestion.
cheers
This may sound like a dumb question but here goes.
You indicate that we can add programs by downloading them into the Addons directory. Do they just go into that directory or subdirectories?
I am building two versions, one an OEM (for me at home) and other is a VLK for work. Knowing how they go into the Addons directory will save me valuable time both at work and with my family/friends.
Thank You
Zarlon
PS. I am in the process of looking at all of your articles. Man you are a fountain of information & procedures. You are
You download the .CAB/.ZIP/.RAR/.7z files to that directory. It's just a storage folder, really, to keep things organized.
Hi!
after a very long sleepless weekend, hours of foul language and one big pile of newly burnt useless winxp installation cds - I am left to discover that all hope is lost and despite my heroic efforts to manually (and later with nlite) slipstream blooming windows xp - so it could acknowledge the existence of my very real (just ask Fedora) WD80 SATA drive on my crappy ASUS P4S800D MOBO - the forces of money grabbing evil (i.e SIS hatred, Micro[on global scale]Soft Evil and the rest of the lot) have once more prevailed! for it seems a "txtmode" version of the SIS 180 or 180OB - which according to section 5 of the slipstreaming article is needed for the rest of the just battle - is no where to be found on the World Wide Web - so it seems the only solution will be to write this weird forum S.O.S!
guys where's that driver in txtmode anyone anyone at all!?!?!
p.s
thanks for the article btw if I didn't stumble upon in it (round 4 am or so but still) I would keep burning copies of winxp containing cursed PNP drivers for ever!
ok think i got it now just had to drop the .oem file in the same folder as the drivers - this will be a good time to blow my brains off for being so dumb after all someone should hold responsible for all the suffering
can you tell me how to create this from the files stored in my recovery partition?
m.
It's not possible. A recovery partition is a proprietary piece of technology and generally cannot be harnessed to do anything outside of its intended purpose.
I have maybe the dumbest question... when i add the wmp11 exe to the addons, it says to either install wmp11 slipstreamer or to copy the installed .exe to the nlite root folder. and all the other addons are running the installations while nlite is processing the final steps. why is that ?? do i really have to re-install all my exe s to the pc ?? please help....
Where are you downloading the version of WMP11 you're using for nlite from?
microsoft site...
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/B...n&categoryid=4
and can you help me with the 2nd and most critical problem ?? why do all the exe s prompt as if i have to install them ?? and when i cancel them, nlite says that the addon is not the expected type...
Cheers...
The executables that can be integrated with nLite are not the same type of executable you can download from any website. In the application integration section of my guide there are three links to sites that have software specifically repackaged for the slipstreaming process. All of these sites carry WMP11 repackaged to work with nLite, and you must make sure that all software you're trying to integrate also comes from these three sites.
Thanks Buddy.. i should be able to carry the process from here onwards.
Cheers...
Thanks for stopping by, Panduka.
THANKYOU! THANKYOU! THANKYOU! I am one of those jerks that never posts comments, but I could not let this one go without expressing my gratitude. I am technical, but by no means a computer builder. Your Slipstreaming Forum was still able to walk me through step by step on how to bring myself out of 3 days of utter computer he((.
I appreciate the help that even the tech at the computer store could not give me. I will tell everyone I know that may be interested in this article all about it, and I look forward to reading more of your work.
You are a life saver. Keep it up.
Thanks, Walnutz.
I appreciate your comments.