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How To: Slipstream Windows XP SP3 and Vista SP1

David Murphy — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:30:27 -0500

There’s nothing we dislike more than firing up a fresh, new installation of an operating system only to find a slew of hotfixes, updates, and patches awaiting us through the Windows Update mechanism. Granted, we can take some small comfort from the fact that the updating process is relatively automatic—but not so when it comes to outfitting a new OS installation with all the requisite driver packages. This list can be a doozy: videocard drivers, soundcard drivers, motherboard drivers, etc.

But you can reduce the time and effort it takes to get a fresh install into tip-top shape. By creating a slipstreamed installation disc you’ll have all the patches, fixes, drivers, and options you need at the ready to be easily and automatically integrated into your next OS install—be it XP or Vista. This is especially relevant now, with new service packs available for both OSes (SP1 for Vista and SP3 for XP). If your original OS disc shipped prior to the SP release, your slipstreamed disc will give you all the newly added features. Depending on your operating system, you can make your customized installation disc using one of two handy tools, nLite or vLite. We’ll show you how.

What you Need:

A PC
45 Minutes

AND

A Windows XP Pro Installation Disc
$300, www.microsoft.com
nLite
Free, www.nliteos.com

A Windows Vista Home Premium Installation Disc
$240, www.microsoft.com
vLite
Free, www.vlite.net

1. Setting Up an XP Slipstream Disc

First things first: Download nLite, then point the program to the directory where your Windows files reside. Just to clarify, that’s not C:\Windows\; the program wants the location of the installation files 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 files there. Once nLite finds them, it’ll ask you where you want to save the installation files that will subsequently be modified by your tweaks. Make a new folder on your hard drive for this part. The program will copy over the installation files automatically.

Hit Next to be taken to the Settings menu. If you’ve crafted a customized nLite installation in the past, the parameters of your configuration 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. After you’ve done that, go to http://tinyurl.com/4qvth5 and download the SP3 installation file. Select the executable in nLite and hit Next. Congratulations—you now have an SP3 installation disc!

2. Tweaking an XP Slipstream Disc

Now that SP3 is integrated, you’ll be staring at nLite’s Hotfixes and Updates screen. As the name suggests, this is where you can integrate any number of hotfixes 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 fixes 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 important, as it allows you to integrate drivers directly into the slipstreamed disc. We wanted to pre-install the drivers for our videocard, so we grabbed the driver pack from Nvidia’s website. We then extracted the files 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 file. 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 applications, click the Compatibility tab and select the different topics that represent functionality you know you need to keep.

Otherwise, start stripping. We trimmed the fat from the applications section and nuked a ton of configurations from the keyboards menu. Your final 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.

3. Installing an XP Slipstream Disc

Next, you’re presented with the Unattended screen, where you can shorten and modify the actual installation process of Windows XP itself. A number of tabs are responsible for the different 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 different XP accounts we typically 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 field 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 native resolution. Hit Next!

We didn’t change any of the settings on the following Options screen. It’s for editing system options that we’d much prefer to keep as-is at this point. Once you click Next, you’re presented with the final Tweaks menu. These are registry edits that control operating system-level functionality, the kinds of things you typically play with immediately after installing Windows.

We used this screen to delete unwanted desktop icons and adjust our Windows Explorer options (showing all file extensions, for example) to reflect 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 specified. After hitting Next one final time, nLite will present you with the option to create an image of your installation or burn it to rewriteable media directly. Make sure you hit the Make ISO or Burn button to do so—don’t just hit Next!

Next: Make a Vista Slipstream Disc!

1. Setting Up a Vista Slipstream Disc

Creating a Vista slipstream disc is much like creating one for XP. Download and fire up vLite, place your Vista disc in your optical drive, and select it as the source of your installation files. Once vLite has copied the files 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 files, so click that option. But note that you have to do this before you run any tweaks or secondary modifications—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 program will automatically integrate the update into the Vista installation files. After 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 five boxes of optional tweaking pages, then click Next. The following Integration page is just like the one we described for nLite: You use the Hotfixes 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.

2. 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 Accessibility 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 modifications, 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 first thing we did was flip off the relentlessly 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 slipstream 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!

How To: Streamline and Customize your Vista Installation

Mark Edward Soper — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:32:02 -0500

Tired of Vista installation bloat? Looking for an easy way to set up an unattended install process? Wishing for a faster way to tweak your favorite settings after Vista is installed? There’s an easy solution for all these scenarios, thanks to a little program called vLite.

VLite allows you to create a customized Windows Vista installation disc that contains only the features you need and leaves out all the drivers and components you don’t use. The program also lets you perform an unattended install and configure a variety of post-installation tweaks.

Maybe you want to make your next Vista installation faster and easier by creating a one-button install disc. Maybe you want to put Vista on a diet. Hands-down, vLite is a great customization program that belongs in any power user’s arsenal. However, while the process is straightforward, we recommend that you test your disc on a virtual machine, such as the free Virtual PC 2007 (www.microsoft.com), before doing a full install.

Time: 45 mins

What You Need

vLite
Free, www.vlite.net
Windows Vista DVD
Upgrade or Full Version
$100-$400, www.microsoft.com
(you can’t use a restore DVD or
partition with vLite)

1. Get Started with vLite

VLite can be downloaded as either a 1.56MB installer or a leaner 1.43MB self-extracting archive. You need administrator-level access to run the application, so right-click the executable and select the Run as Administrator option—which is right below the Open command.

When vLite opens, the program prompts you to browse to the folder containing the Windows Vista installation files. Insert your Windows Vista DVD, click Browse, navigate to the optical drive, and click OK. Then click OK again on the Copy Files dialog and select a folder for storing the Vista installation files. Use the Make New Folder button to create a new folder if necessary. It takes about 10 minutes to copy the files from the Vista DVD.

Next, select the Vista edition you want to configure. VLite is a “world citizen,” so it’s compatible with non-U.S. editions such as Home BasicN, BusinessN, and Starter, as well as Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate. Once you’ve made your selection, click OK. After you complete the copy and selection process, the vLite screen lists the location of the Vista files and the version information.

Before continuing, use the Options menu to check the location of the temporary files folder. The program displays a message if there’s not enough space, so you can select a folder on a different drive. Click OK to close the Options menu; then click Next to continue.

After vLite copies your Vista DVD’s contents, it’s ready to customize the install files.

2.Choose a Task

In vLite’s Tasks tab you can select or deselect the parts of your install process you would like to customize:

Integration: integrates hotfixes, drivers, and language packs
Components: removes unneeded components to reduce the size of the Vista install image and the installed size of Vista
Tweaks: adjusts the Vista configuration to save time and steps after installation is complete
Unattended Setup: automates Vista setup to save time
Bootable ISO: creates a bootable ISO image or burns the image to CD or DVD.

By default, all options are selected. We recommend you clear the “Enable before apply” option; otherwise, you might forget to apply changes, and you’ll wonder why you created an ISO image identical to the original. When you disable this option, the program forces you to make and apply changes before it lets you make a bootable ISO. If you want to create only an unattended install image, clear all but the Unattended Setup check box. Click Next to continue.

3. Add a Side of Hotfixes and Drivers

The more hotfixes you add to Vista SP1 now, the fewer you’ll need to install later.

Now you’re in the Integration menu’s Hotfixes tab. If you’re customizing Vista SP1, you will see already-integrated hotfixes, but you can add additional hotfixes introduced post-SP1. (To locate them, go to www.microsoft.com/downloads and search for updates for Windows Vista SP1. Be sure to save, rather than run, hotfixes.) Click Insert, navigate to the folder containing the hotfixes you want to add to the installation, select them, and click Open.

To add drivers, click the Drivers tab. Use the Insert button and navigate to the appropriate folders to add drivers, which then appear at the bottom of the dialog.

Note that drivers included as a standard part of Vista or Vista SP1 are not listed. To add language packs, click the Language Pack tab. The current language in use is listed. Use the Insert button and navigate to the appropriate folders to add language packs. Click Next.

4. Kick Unwanted Features to the Curb

The Compatibility dialog opens next. Within the Features tab you can deselect the Vista features you want to remove. (We kicked Scanners and Cameras and Windows Fax and Scan to the curb, since we’ll eventually use third-party apps for picture transfer and scanning.)

The Applications tab lists a few popular third-party apps that depend on Vista components, such as ACDSee/XnView and Halo 2. If you plan to install a listed application, click the empty check box next to it. Keep in mind that checked items will be included in the Vista installation image. Click OK to continue.

5. Remove Components to Slim Vista

Selecting components to remove can be tricky. Keep an eye on the Help window to the right for suggestions and warnings.

The Components dialog can be tricky. Unlike the Compatibility dialog, the Components dialog is used to remove components in particular categories, such as accessories, drivers, and hardware support. Checked items will be removed from your image. As you select each item, a help dialog on the right side of the display lists the size of the item, what it does, and under what situations it should be kept. Items that can be particularly dangerous to remove are listed in red type.

We removed Paint, Snipping Tool, and Wordpad from Accessories (they won’t be missed), almost all items in the Driver category except for some storage controller listings (we’ll install updated video drivers ourselves), all games (Vista’s games are pretty lame), fax and iSCSI support from the Hardware Support category, Asian language support from the Languages category, sample files from the Multimedia category, and IIS from the Network category. We kept all of the services.

The original Windows Ultimate installation includes 172 total items. We selected 68 for removal. Once you have your list ready, click Next to continue.

6. Tweak Now, Save Time Later

If you’re always tweaking these settings anyway, let vLite do it for you, and you won’t have to make the changes ever again!

The Tweaks dialog allows you to preconfigure commonly changed settings in four areas. The Security option lets you edit Anti-Spyware Realtime Protection, Data Execution Prevention, and UAC options. The System section allows you to set AutoPlay and paging executive, hibernation, memory requirement, Power button, and Sleep button options. Explorer lets you edit view settings for the Control Panel, file extensions, hidden files and folders, and operating system files. And finally, the Internet Explorer option allows you to edit the IE Phishing filter and phishing verification balloon tips. Click an item you want to change (such as the Power button), and a pull-down menu arrow appears to the right of the current setting. Select the setting you prefer. Click Next to continue.

7. Run an Unattended Installation

The Unattended dialog helps you create an unattended installation. In the General tab, you can select your preferences for the install process. “Select this version on install” refers to the version of Vista you specified when you started vLite; the “Protect your PC” button lets you choose an automatic-update setting. In the Regional tab, you can specify the UI language, time and currency format, keyboard or input method, and time zone.

8. Burn a New Installation Disc

You get a few different options for making your final disc, based on how much time you want to spend!

Once done with the Unattended tab, click Apply to open the Apply Method dialog. Of the three options given, use Rebuild One (the default) to create the smallest ISO image and smallest installation size (select the others to see suggestions on when to use them). Click OK. It takes about 15 minutes to complete changes to the install image. Click Next when prompted to open the ISO menu. You can create an ISO file on disk, CD, or DVD. You can adjust burn speed, verify the image after writing it, perform a simulated test write, or split the image to fit onto multiple CDs. After you create an install disc, use the Preset menu to save your configuration for reuse before exiting vLite.

How To: Slipstream your XP installation

Maximum PC — Sat, 01 Jan 2005 13:20:28 -0600

Important! We've updated our Slipstream How-To to include instructions for Slipstreaming Windows XP SP3 with nLite and Slipstreaming Windows Vista SP1 with vLite. Be sure to check out these updated articles to create the most up-to-date Windows installation CD.

Slipstream XP with Service Pack 3

Slipstream Vista with Service Pack 1

Add RAID drivers and Service Pack 2 to your original Windows CD!

Think of how you treat a brand-new car: You cherish and pamper it at first. You even give up your Sunday afternoons to wash and wax it by hand. Your heart skips a beat whenever you see that gleaming steel beast waiting for you in the parking lot. A newly installed version of Windows XP can inspire similar devotion. Not only do you thrill at its pristine condition but you patiently, and even eagerly downloaded all the latest patches from Windows Update so as to keep your OS shipshape.

But over time, most of us begin to take that new car—and that clean WinXP installation—for granted. As it accumulates miles and wear and tear, your erstwhile pride and joy becomes just another drain on your wallet—and your time. Hand-washing, you discover, just isn’t worth the effort anymore. In its place: a quickie car wash at the local gas station. If only there were a simple wash-and-rinse equivalent for WinXP.

Guess what? Such a thing does exist. It’s called slipstreaming—the mystical art of creating an up-to-the-minute Windows XP setup CD with all the latest patches preinstalled, so you won’t have to spend half your life on Microsoft’s Windows Update web site. As always, Maximum PC is here to show you how to do it. Heck, we’ll even help you add RAID or Serial ATA controller drivers to your CD so you won’t need a floppy drive (or the F6 key) to install Windows. (Note: Service Pack 2 wasn’t available when we went to press, but it should be by the time you read this. If SP2 isn’t available, the instructions in this story will still work with SP1.)

So, how about it? Are you ready to bid your hand-washing days adieu? Then read on…Ingredients:

. Windows XP setup CD

. Internet connection

. CD burner

. ISO Buster (www.isobuster.com)

. Nero 5.5.9.0 or newer (get the non-6.0 versions from www.oldversion.com)

Step 1: Collect the necessary files

Before getting started, we’ll need to download the full, stand-alone installation of Service Pack 2 (as opposed to performing a web-based upgrade). Go to download.microsoft.com and look under the Windows XP section or simply run Windows Update from Internet Explorer.

While you’re at it, grab the latest drivers for your RAID or Serial ATA controller. If you add them to your install CD, you won’t need to use an old-fashioned floppy drive to install Windows. For an add-in RAID or SATA card, look for the drivers on the web site of your controller chip’s manufacture. Some of the most popular controllers are made by Promise, Intel, Adaptec, and HighPoint. If your controller is integrated onto your motherboard, hit up your mobo manufacturer’s web site.

You can roll your RAID drivers into your XP install disc by slipstreaming!

Step 2: Update your setup files

Our next objective is to extract Service Pack 2 to a folder so we can update our existing Windows setup files. Open the command prompt by clicking Start, Run, and typing cmd.exe. Use the cd (change directory) command to navigate to the folder where you just saved the SP2 executable in the previous step. (The syntax for cd is cd , so if you saved the SP2 executable to, say, C:Downloads, you would type cd C:Downloads to go there.) Extract the SP2 files by typing xpSP2 –x, where xpSP2 is the name of the SP2 executable you downloaded. When prompted for a destination to extract the files to, enter C:xpSP2.

Once the files have been extracted, insert your Windows XP setup CD into an optical drive and copy its entire contents to a different folder on your hard drive. For the sake of simplicity, use C:xpsetupcd as the folder. Now, return to the command prompt and type the following command: C:xpSP2i386updateupdate /s:C:xpsetupcd. This will update your existing Windows setup files with the new code contained in Service Pack 2. A message box will pop up to notify you when the process is complete.

Service Pack 2's built-in updater makes it easy to patch y our original Windows setup files with Microsoft's latest code.

Step 3: Add your RAID/SATA Drivers

We’re now ready to add RAID/SATA controller drivers to our CD (if you don’t want to do this, skip ahead to the final step). Open the folder to which you copied your Windows XP CD (C:xpsetupcd) and create a subfolder called $OEM$. Then, create a subfolder of $OEM$ called $1 and a subfolder of $1 called drivers. The resulting path should be C:xpsetupcd$OEM$$1drivers. This is where Windows Setup will look for drivers that aren’t contained in its standard driver library. For organizational purposes, make a subfolder within drivers named for the type of driver it will contain—for instance, create a RAID folder for RAID drivers or an SATA folder for Serial ATA drivers. You can use any name, as long as it has fewer than eight characters.

With the aforementioned folder structure in place, copy the Windows XP RAID/SATA drivers directly into the folder you created above (we used C:xpsetupcd$OEM$$1driversRAID). If your drivers came in a self-extracting executable rather than a zip file, you may be able to extract its contents manually by opening it in a program like WinRAR. (Alternately, you can run the self-extracting executable, then dig around in your system’s TEMP directory—usually C:/documents and settings/YourUsername/LocalSettings/Temp until you find the right directory). Finally, locate the SYS file for your RAID/SATA controller from among the files you just extracted; it should be named after your specific controller (e.g. fasttx2k.sys for a Promise FastTrak TX2 RAID controller). The drivers for different operating systems may be split into distinct folders, so make sure you find the SYS file that’s intended for Windows XP. Once you find the SYS file, copy it to the i386 folder of your Windows CD (C:xpsetupcdi386).

Adding RAID or Serial ATA drivers to your Windows CD will save you the trouble of using a floppy disc to manually install them every time you reformat.

Step 4 – Introduce Windows to your drivers

Now that we’ve added our RAID/SATA driver files to the mix, we need to tell Windows Setup about the existence of these drivers and how to use them. But unless you happen to have this information memorized—and if you do, this might be a good time to turn off your computer and spend some time in the real world—you’ll need to look it up in your driver’s INF file. This file is usually found in the same place as the SYS file you located in the previous step and will probably have the same name, albeit with an INF extension. Open the INF file in Notepad and copy the PCI identifier string, which is a series of characters beginning with PCIVEN—for instance, PCIVEN_105A&DEV_3376. There may be other text on the same line as the identifier string; if this is the case, start at the first occurrence of PCIVEN and copy the text up to but not including the last period (or the end of the line, whichever comes first).

Next, open TXTSETUP.SIF (situated in C:xpsetupcdi386) and paste your PCI identifier string under the [HardwareIdsDatabase] section of that file. At the end of the string, add an equal-sign followed by the driver name in quotes. In the case of our Promise RAID controller, the resulting line is: PCIVEN_105A&DEV_3376 = “fasttx2k”. Note: If your driver’s INF file contains multiple PCI identifier strings, copy all of them into TXTSETUP.SIF.

Now scroll down to the [SourceDisksFiles] section of TXTSETUP.SIF and add the following text:

driver_filename.sys = 1,,,,,,_x,4,1

where driver_filename.sys is the name of your RAID /SATA driver’s SYS file. Note that you should include the .sys here. Then, under the [SCSI.Load] section, enter:

driver_filename = driver_filename.sys,4

Once again, driver_filename is the name of your driver’s SYS file. Note the lack of a .sys suffix on the left side of the equal-sign.

Finally, in the [SCSI] section of the file, add the following:

driver_filename = "RAID/SATA Device Name”

You can enter whatever you want for “RAID/SATA Device Name,” but we recommend using a meaningful description (such as the name of your RAID/SATA controller). Finally, save and close TXTSETUP.SIF.

Somewhere in the depths of your RAID/SATA controller's INF file lurks the fabled PCI identifier string.

Step 5 – Create a customized setup routine

You’re almost there. In this step, we’ll make a file called WINNT.SIF in the i386 folder of our Windows setup files (C:xpsetupcdi386). This file can be used to create an unattended installation routine—a subject beyond the scope of this how-to—but we’ll simply use it to point Windows to the drivers we’ve slipstreamed. Create WINNT.SIF and enter the following:

[Data]
AutoPartition=0
MsDosInitiated="0"
UnattendedInstall="Yes"

[Unattended]
UnattendMode=ProvideDefault
OemPreinstall=Yes
OemSkipEula=Yes
NoWaitAfterTextMode=1
NoWaitAfterGUIMode=1

WaitForReboot="No"
TargetPath=WINDOWS
DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
OemPnPDriversPath=

[GuiUnattended]
OEMSkipWelcome = 1

[UserData]
ProductKey=
FullName=""
OrgName=""

You’ll need to customize the OemPnPDriversPath line by entering the path to the INF file for your RAID/SATA driver (for instance if your drivers are in C:xpsetupcdi386$OEM$$1driversRAID use: OemPnPDriversPath=driversRAIDFastTrackWinXP).

There are a few other fields you may want to customize before you close WINNT.SIF. Type your product key, name, and company name in the ProductKey, FullName, and OrgName fields respectively to avoid having to enter them during setup. And if you’d like to install Windows to a folder other than C:WINDOWS, edit the TargetPath field as needed.

WINNT.SIF is a powerful file that allows you to customize and automate many parts of the Windows installation process.

Step 6 – Prepare your bootable CD and burn it

Our next task is to extract the boot image from our original Windows XP disc so we can use it to make our slipstreamed CD bootable as well. With your original XP setup CD inserted, launch ISO Buster and select “Bootable CD” from the left pane. In the right pane, right-click Microsoft Corporation.img and choose “Extract Microsoft Corporation.img.” Extract this file to the folder where you copied your XP setup files (C:xpsetupcd).

Fire up Nero Burning ROM (or EZ CD Creator, or any other CD burning app) and go to the New Compilation window (click “Close Wizard” if Nero’s wizard comes up). Select “CD-ROM (Boot)” from the left pane and open the Boot tab. For “Source of boot image data” choose “Image file” and use the Microsoft Corporation.img file you just extracted. Check to enable expert settings, and set “Kind of emulation” to “No emulation” and “Number of loaded sectors” to 4. (These instructions will vary if you use another application, of course.)

Next, head over to the ISO tab and set “File/Directory name length” to “ISO Level 2.” Ensure that “Format” is set to “Mode 1” and “Character Set” to “ISO 9660,” and make certain all four checkboxes on this tab are checked (“Joliet,” “Allow pathdepth of more than 8 directories,” “Allow more than 255 characters in path,” and “Do not add the ‘;1’ ISO file version extension”). Finally, click the Label tab and set the “Volume Label” field to the value used by your original Windows XP CD—this is the name that appears next to your CD-ROM drive in My Computer when your XP CD is inserted.

At this point, we’re almost ready to rock. Click the “New” button to open the Nero File Browser, and then locate the folder where you copied your Windows XP CD. Open the folder and add its entire contents to your CD image. When you’re all set, mash the “Burn” button and bask in the glory of your shiny new slipstreamed Windows XP CD, replete with RAID/SATA drivers and Service Pack 2!

Make your slipstreamed Windows CD bootable by extracting the boot image from your original Windows CD and feeding it to Nero.