Just FYI, I just used 'createspannedshares' (it's in the 'samples' subdirectory of Windows AIK) to split a Vista Ultimate DVD into a set of CDs to allow installation on an older machine that has only a CD drive. Worked perfectly by following the directions at this MS Technet page. The instructions talk about the need to first copy all the files from the DVD to disk, and then remove the read-only attributes. But I forgot to do the latter, and it still worked with no problem - which leads me to think you could actually just point at the actual DVD drive as your 'source' without the need to do all the copying? Be sure to make the first CD in the set bootable per the instructions; for the rest just use OSCDIMG without the "-b" option. Also, I just used the script's default max CD size of 640mb. If you're using 700mb CDs, I'd suggest changing that (instructions are commented within the script but are kinda confusing), as I ended up with 5 CDs with the last one being only about 60k. I suspect that increasing the CD max size option from 640 to 700 would have reduced that to a clean 4 CD set. When you boot the first CD and start the install, it will prompt you to change the CDs as needed - and even has a nice suggestion that you'll need to stay by your PC to do the changes. After going through all five, it then asked for CD #1 again to complete the installation. Perfect.
