What prompted this question is my inability to get Windows File Protection working. For some reason, WFP would not recognize my i386 folder and would always prompt for a CD. Yes, I left off the trailing \i386 in the reg keys. Nothing I tried worked. SP1 reinstall, re-copying i386 from my media, etc etc. I ended up doing an in-place reinstall of Windows XP with integrated SP1 using source files on the local HDD. After all's said and done, WFP now works and I don't have to worry about the location of service pack files since it's been slipstreamed by Microsoft. Now my new challenge is to get sysprep to stop munching my default user profile. It didn't do this prior to the OS reinstall. I left out a few things in SYSPREP.INF (like the PC name and domain name) so that the tech could name the PC and join it to the domain during mini-setup. This worked perfectly in the past. Now when I run sysprep, certain things in SYSPREP.INF are being read but others are ignored and mini-setup is running fully unattended. The PC comes back up with a totally stock default user profile although the administrator's profile is fine. My intended default user profile has plenty of customizations (theme/icons/etc) but it vanishes after sysprep. Is there another answer file hiding out somewhere? RM