I’ve had a draft for 21 months with these links in it, but never posted it…
I know that people are moving away from Windows XP, skipping over Vista, and heading to Windows 7, but these are still some good links. You’ve probably had the opportunity to reinstall Windows on a computer and then go to WindowsUpdate and find out that there are 100+ updates that need to be installed. Well, one of the ways to help reduce the number of updates is to install the most recent major service pack. For Windows XP that is SP3. If you got a computer before SP3, what do you do? You can “slipstream” it. A simple explanation is to say that this is the process where you can take the installation CD that you have, copy it to your hard drive, copy the XP SP3 files over the old ones, and then burn a CD again. This is a handy thing to do and you can read more about doing this with the Windows XP media here:
- Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows: Slipstreaming Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3)
- PC Magazine: Build an XP SP3 Recovery Disc
I haven’t tried it, but since the Vista files come on a DVD, apparently it isn’t quite as easy. However, TechRepublic has some detailed instructions.
As of the time of this posting, there is no Windows 7 service pack yet, but once there is, I’m sure if you search for Windows 7 slipstream you’ll be able to find some articles explaining how to do this same process.
You given a great idea for Windows Slipstreaming. I also found a good article about Windows XP SP3 Slipstreming at http://blog.techinfoworld.com/windows/creating-windows-xp-sp2-slipstreaming/. thanks for your work.