R&D^
EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USESETTING UP A VISTA
SLIPSTREAM DISC
Creating a Vista slipstream disc
is much like creating one for XP.
Download and fi re up vLite, place
your Vista disc in your optical drive, and
select it as the source of your installation
fi les. Once vLite has copied the fi les to a new
location on your hard drive, click Next. The
following screen lets you pick what you want
to modify on the disc. We want to merge SP1
into the installation fi les, so click that option.
But note that you have to do this before you
run any tweaks or secondary modifi cations—
this procedural matter is important enough
that the program actually grays out any other
customization options.
Click Next and you’ll be prompted to
select the location of the SP1 executable
(you can download it at http://tinyurl.
com/2pj24b). Once you’ve done that, the pro-
gram will automatically integrate the update
into the Vista installation fi les. Aft er 60 to 90
minutes of activity, you’ll have a slipstreamed
Vista SP1 disc. And now you can begin to
tweak it!
Click the Tasks tab and select all fi ve
boxes of optional tweaking pages, then click
Next. The following Integration page is just
like the one we described for nLite: You use
the Hotfi xes tab to add in any supplemental
patches you’ve downloaded, the Drivers
tab to include the latest drivers for your
peripherals, and the new Language Pack page
to—you guessed it—add additional language
packs to the slipstreamed disc. Whatever you
choose to do, you have to click the “enable”
box before you start—the Insert option will
be grayed out until you do so. When you’re
done, hit Next.
TWEAKING AND BURNING A
VISTA SLIPSTREAM DISC
In the Components window, you’re
able to set the options you know
you’ll be running in Vista, just so you
don’t accidentally remove them with your
component tweaking. Other than that, this
process is exactly the same as it was for nLite.
Go through the list of options and click those
you’re sure you want to remove from the
installation disc: Perhaps you don’t need Ac-
cessibility options, hate Vista’s built-in games,
or want to nuke all the operating system’s
multimedia functionality and install your
own programs later. Once you’ve made your
modifi cations, click Next.
The following Tweaks page gives you
the chance to modify some of Vista’s more
annoying features before you install the OS.
The fi rst thing we did was fl ip off the relent-
lessly nagging UAC option. We also adjusted
our power scheme to high performance and
tweaked our Explorer settings to our liking.
We ended up ignoring the Services section, as
there was nothing we felt needed editing—or
rather, nothing we felt comfortable turning
on or off. Tweak away and hit Next—you’re
almost done!
Since we’re only testing a Vista slip-
stream disc, we opted to skip entering our
product key on the Unattended Setup options
page. But we did choose to accept the EULA
and we made edits to the various name and
network location options. And that’s it! Click
Accept and select the imaging technique
you want to use. The Rebuild One option
saves you a ton of space, but you only get the
tweaked operating system you selected in the
beginning of the process. Rebuild All places
all Vista versions on the disc, even the ones
you haven’t tweaked the options for.
Make your choice: Burn or create an
image of your slipstreamed disc, and you’re
good to go!1 2