davathar

Thank you for the additional suggestions. I didn't read the nLite EULA carefully it seems. Wrongly assumed it was was a common GNU or other open license. Sorry if I infringed upon anyone's intellectual property rights in my attempts to use the software. It's already uninstalled. :-) MrJinje: Thanks for the info on the OEM kit. I was not aware that existed. I've done corporate application support for most of my computer work and my only work with windows was usually my personal machines until recently. The business I work with is still new, and not particularly interested in even doing computer repair. The guy just got into it from his work as a web designer in a small town. He got asked to fix and build computers so much that he just decided to let it be a business. Spending money on a service like technet would be a waste in his eyes. Hell, having a large enough hard drive to avoid having to make room to do a customer hard drive backup is a waste to him. And just mention "power supply tester" and you'll get "what's wrong with a multimeter?" Spending on the business has never been of interest to him. So, I'll check out the the OEM kit with the live account. And the RIS server sounds interesting too. Thank you dav

My only goal here is to have a working install cd of XP that doesn't require me to install sp3 every time and works on the computers I service. I need to reinstall XP Home and Pro occasionally. I need to reinstall it on computers with big name OEM COA stickers on them. I almost never get a customer who has the CD to reinstall. And often even the (bloated) recovery partition install is missing. I don't need VL and won't use it. I only got that ISO when I couldn't find generic OEM on the MSDN site and thought they might be the same. Nothing I'm asking to do violates the intention of Microsoft's licensing. Even if it may violate the finer details like using the original media. I doubt that anyone expects a user to pay for a new retail license of XP to reinstall it. And even ordering the OEM disks from the manufacture isn't all that practical when you have to pay for them and then wait while your computer is useless. Does no one in this forum do this kind of support? I don't think my request is so outlandish that the only responses I get are nit picking about licensing. How about some practical answers? So, ok. I'm not supposed to use nLite to make an unattended install that I will use on a computer that I'm repairing for a customer. I should instead go through the prompts about time zone, language, and all the other crap that never changes every single time I do a reinstall? I really don't care that nLite isn't "supported" by MS. It's not like my customers are going to call MS for service anyway. They would have to pay for it since most are out of any service agreement time frame. Now, remove the complication of using nLite, is it possible to have ONE install disk (or one for home and one for pro) with SP3 included that will install XP on a fresh hard drive and accept any OEM key? If that's not possible, then I'll just keep using SP2 and letting microsoft update consume hours on my bench for each one I do. I'm sorry if my tone is frustrated. I love forums like this and I have learned a ton just by reading other postings. But I'm looking for a practical solution. And so far I'm not finding one.

I never install XP without a valid license and COA sticker. I also make sure every installation is activated with Microsoft and passes the Genuine Advantage Validation. So, while the install media I'm using isn't the Original, I'm quite confident that Microsoft would have no issue with my use of these "backup" copies of the installation software. It's the licensing that pays their bills, not the media I get the code on. I don't have more CDRWs at the moment. And in the past I've had too many machines that wouldn't boot from them when CDRs would still work. I'm not sure if that would still be an issue with these machines that are only 3 to 6 years old now. Haven't tried it. Are there issues with SP3 integrated installs not validating on OEM Keys where SP2 installs will? Or is it something else causing me problems? The big OEMs don't provide disks to reinstall anymore. And expecting customers to do a system backup, and actually keep track of that CD and know how to use it is too much in most cases. So they bring the box to a computer shop for help. How can I help them if the hard drive is trash and they have no recovery disk and the Product key on their case won't work with my install disks? Surely some of you have dealt with this need in the past. How did you obtain working install CDs?

I've spent way too much time trying to make this work and I've created about a dozen coasters in the process. The problem seems to be that sp3 integration makes the install very specific to which product keys it will accept. But I can't narrow that down since I don't have any original disks left. I work on computers for customers in a small shop that I didn't start and over the years all the originals for XP have been "lost", probably left in cdrom drives and given to customers. I have ISO's, but all of them seem to have been altered in some ways. I know this because they usually have a "Crack" folder in them. :-) I don't want to use any OS install that could have been compromised. So I recently got some ISOs with the identical MD5 hash as listed on the msdn site. I got XP Pro SP3 retail, and VL, and XP Home SP3 Retail. But almost all of my computers that I repair are OEM from large makers like HP and Dell. And none of the CD's I burn get past the Product Key section. It's always an invalid key. I've spend probably 20 hours reading everything I can find to make something work. I've tried changing the setupp.ini to OEM and that didn't work. I've used nLite on a fresh install of XP home edtion and that didn't work. I've burned the new ISO's directly with no changes and that didn't work. So I'm at a loss. Do I really have to burn a different disk for every volume label I might need? I thought the Retail CD would work on the OEM setups with the OEM product keys. Is there a straight forward guide anywhere that details how to make a working install disk that can be used on OEM computers? I really want an unattended setup with IE8 and WMP11 and Hotfixes. But at this point I'd be happy just to have a working untouched SP3 install. The "not so untouched" SP2 versions I have seem to work just fine. But when I took those same disks and slipstreamed sp3, the product key problems occurred. This was with a new version of nLite. But I can't remember if I've tried this on Windows 7 only, or with my XP machine. Even still, I don't trust these sources and would much prefer a clean source to start from. If the MSDN SP3 ISOs aren't a good starting point, where can you recommend I get clean sources from? Sorry if that's too much detail. My brain is a little scattered by the frustration of working on something that should "just work". -dav