Yotta Media

The SimpleHelp weblog posts a thorough walk-through of how to create a custom Windows Vista installation disc with previously mentioned vLite. We already highlighted how to slipstream Vista Service Pack 1 with vLite, but SimpleHelp’s post focuses on stripping out all the Vista features you don’t need to lighten up your installation, similar to how we trimmed down Windows XP to the bare essentials. It may sound daunting, but the step-by-step post is extremely detailed and easy to follow.

Next time you wipe your PC’s hard drive clean and reinstall Windows with that old installation disc, you don’t want to connect your fresh, unpatched and vulnerable system to the internet only to download 176 new updates from Microsoft. If your XP installation CD is older than 2004, once your system is online, you’ll have to wait for hefty service packs to download, chained to your mouse while pushing the Next button, watching progress bars, and rebooting multiple times. Wouldn’t it be better to start your installation, head out to run errands or grab coffee, and come back to an up-to-date system before your system gets online? It’s possible, using some free software and a blank disc. After the jump, I’ll show you how to create an automated, customized XP installation CD or DVD, that includes Microsoft’s official-but-not-released Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.

Note on the current status of Service Pack 3: As of May 2, 2008, Microsoft has released Windows XP Service Pack 3 to PC manufacturers, but due to a last minute bug discovery which has to do with software for businesses (not home users), they have delayed the “release to web”. This means they are not yet pushing it to users via Windows Update, and they have not yet published a Microsoft Download Center page for it. However, the official SP3 file is available for download on Microsoft’s servers. Here’s the direct link to the English version. No word on when SP3 will appear on Windows Update, but no doubt it will be soon. For more on what you get with the new service pack, here’s our complete field guide to SP3.

Why make a “slipstreamed” disc?

Maybe you’re the type who can’t fathom being absent while Windows installs, unable to prune all the unnecessary applications and features, customize the desktop, set up user accounts and install needed drivers. Well, you and I have a lot in common, but we can both enjoy what nLite, a free slipstreaming utility, can do:

• Pre-configure and tweak Windows—Nearly every power-user setting, from hidden file showing to deep registry hacks, can be set from the get-go.
• Pre-install drivers and printers—No more searching through the Nvidia, ATI, or printer manufacturers’ sites for the exact package after install.
• Strip your system for speed—Adam’s already showed us how nLite can help you trim Windows to its bare essentials, which not only saves disk space and frees up memory, but saves you the time of disabling and removing the superfluous stuff later (and clicking “Yes” on every “Are you sure …” prompt).

What you’ll need

• A Windows installation disc
• nLite (and .NET 2.0)
• A copy of Service Pack 3 (SP3) for XP (32-bit), downloaded from Microsoft’s servers
• A working Windows system, with at least 1 GB free hard drive space
• Blank CD or DVD
• WinUpdatesList (recommended)

Note for Vista users: There’s a similar utility for creating a slipstreamed Vista DVD, vLite, which got the step-by-step treatment from Digital Inspiration. That tool, however, doesn’t allow for half as much customization—not yet, anyways.

Getting started

After you’ve installed nLite, load your installation CD into your disc drive and make sure you’ve got your 25-character product key handy. Launch nLite, click to the next screen, “Locating the Windows installation.” Before you go further, create a new folder somewhere on your computer, at the hard drive root (as in “C:\”) if possible. Click “Browse,” select your CD drive, and you’ll be prompted to copy your CD to a folder. Select the folder you created, then wait for the copy to finish.

NLite’s next screen will ask what you want to customize on your install disc. If you only want to update to SP3, only click the “Service Pack” button. But unless you love answering questions and never touch a setting in Windows XP, you’ll want to flip all the switches green and click “Next.”

Now nLite will ask for slipstream files, or packages you want to integrate into the installer. You’ll always want to have the latest service pack available, since, for instance, Service Pack 3 incorporates the fixes made in SP1 and SP2, so it makes them unnecessary. If you grabbed the latest beta of nLite, you’ll see a Service Pack 3 already offered for integration, but it’s an older release candidate. Hit the “Choose” button, select the executable file you downloaded from Microsoft with the seriously long file name, and give nLite a few minutes to implement it. When you see the version number change, hit “Next” and move on.

“Hotfixes and Update Packs” is for all the tiny little Windows Updates between service packs. If you’re including SP3, you can pretty much skip this part. But in the future, and for those not jumping onto SP3, I recommend running WinUpdatesList. You’ll see a list of all the updates you’ve installed, and sorting by date and type should show you what you’ve installed since the last service pack. Right-click on an update, and you’ll get a link to a related Microsoft Knowledge Base article, where you should be able to download the fix directly and patch it into nLite. You can also roll executables for Windows updates—like Internet Explorer 7, which (still!) doesn’t install by default—into your disc.

Click “Next,” and you’ll see an identical screen for drivers. If you know where to find the .INF files that connect your hardware to Windows, you can roll them into your install disc, but be warned: a small printer INF increased the final size of my ISO by at least 200 MB—I’m still trying to figure out why, but if you encounter similar problems, simply throw the driver installation files into spare space on the disc (more on that soon).

Customize your install

You start really making your XP system your own on the next screen. The “Compatibility Window” that pops up can protect you from yourself; unless you’re sure you can do without an item, you’ll want to leave it checked. Behind it, the “Remove Components” section is where you can pull out all the stuff you don’t ever use or don’t have. Most of the savings are small in hard drive size, but keep your system from clogging with services and drivers it doesn’t need. Among the almost-guaranteed safe removals:”Briefcase” from Accessories; most of the non-red items in Hardware; Keyboards and Languages that you don’t ever plan to use; “Tablet PC” from Multimedia; and MSN Explorer and Windows Messenger from Network.

Up next is the “Unattended” section, if you checked it, and this one requires attention to detail. If you want to set and forget your XP install, change “Unattended Mode” to “Fully automated,” but then move slowly through every tab, filling in every section you’d expect to get prompted for during install. You can fill out your Product Key in advance here, and you’ll also want to check “Skip OOBE” (Out Of Body Experience, or the introduction tour). Fill out all the name fields in “Users” and “Owner and Network ID,” and make sure to set the time in “Regional.” Once you’re content you’ve pre-empted your installer, click “Next.”

You can pretty much leave the “Options” pane alone, although I enable the “merge” option by way of hoping for a smaller package. The “Tweaks” options are up next, and while I can’t tell you how to customize your desktop, I’ll note that you can basically set up your desktop, Start Menu, Internet Explorer and lots of other Windows tweaks from these prompts. Check the bottom bar for descriptions, and fear not—all of these can be undone, and we’ve posted a good many here at Lifehacker.

Hit “Next,” and you’re almost done—click “Yes” to start the bundling process. Once that’s finished (about 7-10 minutes on a faster computer), you can click through to make or burn an ISO file. Before doing that, gather up any files you want to keep on the disc, like that finicky printer driver or your favorite app installers, and place them in their own folder in the directory where you copied your original XP CD to. Now hit “Make ISO,” choose where to save the image, and then burn it to CD or DVD using your favorite utility, like the free ISO Recorder.

You’ve now got a CD that’s completely up to date, and installs by itself (once you get past the initial blue-and-white loading screens, that is). You might have to run through nLite a few times if your images turn out bigger than you want, but you can always create a bootable DVD if needed.

What changes, updates, or advanced features have you slipstreamed into your Windows disc? What do you still wish you could have loaded onto your Ultimate No-Touch Install CD? Let’s hear ‘em both in the comments.

Kevin Purdy, associate editor at Lifehacker, won’t be pulling any more late-night emergency XP re-installations for himself or desperate friends. His weekly feature, Open Sourcery, appears every Friday on Lifehacker.

Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Create a selective backup of preference settings for your favorite Firefox extensions with OPIE, a free add-on for Firefox 2. Once you’ve got the Ordered Preference Import/Export extension installed, head to it in the “Tools” menu and you can choose which extensions and preferences you’d like to save and export to a .prefs file, making it easy to auto-configure all the add-ons when moving to new systems or re-installing the Fox. Not a bad extension to have around when Firefox 3 becomes official, but if you’re looking to bundle up the extensions themselves, try the Firefoex Extension Backup Extension. OPIE is a free download, works wherever Firefox 2 does (Original FEBE/CLEO post).

If you’ve flirted with the idea of switching your desktop operating system to Linux but never took the leap, the time is now. This week’s release of Hardy Heron, an Ubuntu release that will be supported until 2011, offers a freer, more productive space for work and play than ever before. It’s not easy jumping blind into a new way of thinking or working, and Ubuntu, the so-called “Linux for Humans” operating system, is no different. For all the online buzz that surrounds the increasingly popular distribution, millions of sane, regular people wonder why they’d ever give up their familiar Mac or PC to venture into something still relatively new. Today we’re shining the spotlight on a few great tools and tweaks that make Heron a worthy switch. Photo by BotheredByBees.

Try out and remove Ubuntu like a Windows program

No hard drives to re-organize, no dual-boot setup—just pop an Ubuntu desktop CD in while Windows is running, and you’ll get an option to install Ubuntu—inside Windows. Basically, a program called Wubi creates a single file tucked away in Windows and packs a virtual Ubuntu installation inside it. When Windows boots up next time, you’ll get an option to boot that pretend Ubuntu installation, and you’re off to see how Ubuntu would run on your system. Sick of experimenting and want to try the next step? Uninstall Wubi the same way you’d uninstall any other program.

Put Remember the Milk and other web gadgets on your desktop

The latest release of desktop widget manager Screenlets can run iGoogle gadgets and other web-based utilities on your desktop. That means modules like Remember the Milk, Google Calendar, and weight tracker The Google 15 can be tucked into a corner for rapid access later. A helpful Tombuntu post explains how to get the most current vision of Screenlets installed in Ubuntu. (Original Screenlets post).

Get full multimedia playback in less than five minutes

Less than two years ago, the best way to get DVDs, Windows Media files, and MP3s to play was to use Automatix, a tool that made installation a one-click affair, but could cause headaches when installing other programs or upgrading to new versions. Now there’s the Medibuntu repository, a single stop for enabling multimedia playback and installing third-party apps and upgrades. Need help installing the good stuff? Head to Medibuntu’s wiki page and copy and run the appropriate codes for your system.

Run Windows XP and other systems inside Ubuntu with VirtualBox

Few people can comfortably leave the Windows world behind entirely, whether due to web sites that only play nice Internet Explorer or Outlook/Office requirements of the job. Luckily, getting Windows up and running inside Linux has never been easier than with VirtualBox, a free virtualization tool that makes running one system inside another as easy as can possibly be. I used VirtualBox to create seamless XP windows inside Linux, and found that, in most cases, if you can install XP, you can get it running in VirtualBox.

Control your system from the keyboard with GNOME Do

I know I’ll catch flak from certain die-hard Quicksilver advocates (how’s it going, Adam?), but application launcher GNOME Do is shaping up to be an honest-to-goodness Linux counterpart, if not equivalent. Trade text between files, start emails, IMs and even Twitters, query your Firefox search plugins, and much more. What’s more, work is moving forward on that key third “indirect object pane,” moving this little program that could toward the automation sweet spot.

Tweak your desktop however you want it

If you’re a Mac fan or just familiar with OS X’s interface, the GNOME-based Ubuntu has got a turbo-charged dock of its own, the Avant Window Navigator (AWN), that can be loaded with some seriously cool applets, like an inline mail notifier, to-do organizers, a Google- and Outlook-compatible calendar, and much more (here’s a guide to installing and extending AWN, if you’re interested). More the Windows-style bottom toolbar type? You can re-arrange the built-in toolbars to your heart’s content. If none of those options feels creative or different enough, however, you can tweak to your heart’s content with the new KDE 4, a desktop environment that can be substituted or combined with Ubuntu’s default GNOME look (and available as a “cutting edge” Kubuntu system. Combined with the crazy amount of desktop effects available through Compiz Fusion (previously explained in detail), your desktop is your blank canvas.

Keep your open-source apps’ settings and plug-ins

More and more open-source apps are being released not just with Linux versions available, but with nearly fully-featured importing and sharing of profiles, plug-ins, and all the other stuff you’ve spent quality time getting just so. And since Ubuntu now has a built-in ability to read and writes to Windows-formatted disks, you don’t even have to move a thing to see yourFirefox bookmarks, Thunderbird mail accounts, and Pidgin buddy lists rise up to meet you. Check out our guide to dual-booting with a single data store for details on getting the most from open-source apps across two operating systems.

These are, of course, my own picks of productivity boosters and newb-friendly progress we’ve seen in Ubuntu since the last time we rounded up our favorite Ubuntu applications, and some still-worthy apps and tweaks before that. What drove you to check out the free, open-source OS? How would you entice your solidly Mac- and PC-based friends to to pop in a live CD? Let’s hear it in the comments.

Kevin Purdy, associate editor at Lifehacker, remembers asking his Linux-pushing friend what a swap partition was. His weekly feature, Open Sourcery, appears every Friday on Lifehacker.