@ StephenC, As promised I prepared another nLite CD, being careful about its content. This time, the OS reinstal when fine, but I encountered several odd problems afterwards (the system asking for the original CD of XP, or impossibility to run nLite after installing it,...) So I made a clean reinstal using my original Dell CD, then made another nLite CD using the latest beta version of nLite (I don't like to give up...) and did the reinstal of the system once again. This time it seems good and I think I'll be able to keep this nLite CD version as a good one... Thanks again for your help , take care Xavier