http://www.maximumpc.com|SEP 08 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC| 67
INSTALLING AN XP
SLIPSTREAM DISC
Next, you’re presented with the
Unattended screen, where you can
shorten and modify the actual instal-
lation process of Windows XP itself. A num-
ber of tabs are responsible for the diff erent
sections of the installation routine. We started
off by entering our Windows product key into
the appropriate section on the General tab
and turning off System Restore (we live on
the edge). We then selected the Users tab and
added all the diff erent XP accounts we typi-
cally have on our machine, making sure to
assign each to the appropriate local group.
We added our naming and workgroup
details under the Owner and Network ID tab,
leaving the Domain name fi eld blank. We then
made sure to set the correct options for our
Automatic Updates and upped our display
resolution to something a bit higher than
Windows’s default—remember, since we’ve
slipstreamed our videocard drivers, we should
have no problem matching our monitor’s na-
tive resolution. Hit Next!
We didn’t change any of the settings on
the following Options screen. It’s for edit-
ing system options that we’d much prefer to
keep as-is at this point. Once you click Next,
you’re presented with the fi nal Tweaks menu.
These are registry edits that control operat-
ing system-level functionality, the kinds of
things you typically play with immediately
aft er installing Windows. We used this screen
to delete unwanted desktop icons and adjust
our Windows Explorer options (showing all
fi le extensions, for example) to refl ect our
personal tastes.
We’re not going to run through all the
options—that would take several more pages.
Pick what suits you and hit Next; nLite will
make the changes you’ve specifi ed. Aft er
hitting Next one fi nal time, nLite will present
you with the option to create an image of your
installation or burn it to rewriteable media di-
rectly. Make sure you hit the Make ISO or Burn
button to do so—don’t just hit Next!SETTING UP AN XP
SLIPSTREAM DISC
First things fi rst: Download nLite,
then point the program to the direc-
tory where your Windows fi les
reside. Just to clarify, that’s not C:\Windows\;
the program wants the location of the instal-
lation fi les for your OS. The easiest way to
accomplish this is to put your installation
CD in the drive and tell nLite to look for the
fi les there. Once nLite fi nds them, it’ll ask
you where you want to save the installation
fi les that will subsequently be modifi ed by
your tweaks. Make a new folder on your hard
drive for this part. The program will copy
over the installation fi les automatically.
Hit Next to be taken to the Settings menu.
If you’ve craft ed a customized nLite installa-
tion in the past, the parameters of your con-
fi guration will be listed here. Load them up
and press the Next button until the program
prompts you to burn a disc. Done!
If you’re starting from scratch, ignore the
Settings screen and click Next. You can now
decide what options you want to modify to
create your customized installation disc. For
simplicity’s sake, we’re going with the default
All option. But once you’ve played around
with nLite, you might identify certain areas
of your installation that you don’t want to
tweak. If so, you would deselect them from
this options menu so they won’t appear later.
To start loading XP Service Pack 3 into
your Windows disc, click Next. Aft er you’ve
done that, go to http://tinyurl.com/4qvth5
and download the SP3 installation fi le.
Select the executable in nLite and hit Next.
Congratulations—you now have an SP3
installation disc!
1
TWEAKING AN XP
SLIPSTREAM DISC
Now that SP3 is integrated, you’ll
be staring at nLite’s Hotfi xes and
Updates screen. As the name sug-
gests, this is where you can integrate any
number of hotfi xes or update packs into your
installation—the same way you slapped SP3
onto your disc. Your best bet is to ignore this
screen for now. Once you’re done making the
slipstreamed disc and you have SP3 up and
running, make a note of what fi xes pop up in
Windows Update and download them from
Microsoft ’s knowledge base. You can then
integrate them into a future version of your
slipstreamed disc.
The Drivers screen is a bit more impor-
tant, as it allows you to integrate drivers
directly into the slipstreamed disc. We
wanted to pre-install the drivers for our vid-
eocard, so we grabbed the driver pack from
Nvidia’s website. We then extracted the fi les
from the archival executable to a separate
folder and selected this folder as the source
of the drivers in nLite. When you do this, the
program gives you a list of all the drivers in
the directory—in our case, a single fi le. We
selected that, clicked OK, then clicked Next.
This takes you to the Components screen,
where you can strip out the unwanted side
features of the operating system. If you want
a safeguard against removing critical applica-
tions, click the Compatibility tab and select
the diff erent topics that represent functional-
ity you know you need to keep.
Otherwise, start stripping. We trimmed
the fat from the applications section and
nuked a ton of confi gurations from the
keyboards menu. Your fi nal selections are up
to you, but here’s a helpful hint: If you don’t
know what something does, don’t get rid of it.2 3