I found the same issue and narrowed it down to the following hotfix WindowsXP-KB922760-x86-ENU.exe nlite.in_ had the following lines [LD] HKU,".DEFAULT\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce","nltide2" HKU,".DEFAULT\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce","nltide2",0x00020000,"cmd.exe /C rundll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSectionEx nLite.inf,L,,4,N" Once I removed the hotfix, problem went away. Cheers