noxxious

1) its always a good idea to keep an unmodified "safe" source as this would be the copy state that you would want to go back to in the unfortunate event that you discover something wrong in your current nlited install/copy. also, keeping a safe copy is a good idea when the time comes that hotfixes, and updates begin to pileup and you want to make a new installer with updated files. 2) yes, SP integration works best if you have a clean copy with only the previous SP that has no other addons... 3) from my experience IE7 + KB947864 integration went smoothly for me, no problems (i used the original files from windows download servers, not the addons). as of today, no updates needed when i checked windowsupdate. hope this helps.

from my experience, the non critical components i removed from nlite get reported as optional updates on the windows update site (examples of which are windows messenger, and the remote desktop connection). the hotfixes are quite different as they only put/replace files that are currently in the system or just add/modify the registry. you could run the updater if you like and later delete the files in the software distribution in windows folder to reclaim some space.

im a fellow E-PC user as well, as the service pack is designed to be installed in a vanilla system, there would probably be files added that were previously nlited. sad to say, to keep your little lappy clean, you could opt to make another nlited installer with sp3 slipstreamed.