No im not adding a service pack (im starting with a retail XP pro with sp3 disk) but I was trying to add the onepiece post sp3 3.9 update pack. When I was doing the slipstream process with nlite, I actually did get an error saying the SVCPACK.inf was in use, but the process continued with no further errors. I could definitely make a clean XP virtual machine real quick to do the slipstream process with. And yea that other command works fine in administrator, it brings up the windows activation wizard, i did this because im using a dummy key to automate the install process. Also does anyone else have any thoughts on the poweruser question? Thanks for your help man!