Ponch

I'm not sure what you try to say here, "crossing the Rubicon" is an expression that indicates taking a decision from which you can't go back and that could potentially have important consequences. It has nothing to do with a 50% probability of being right or wrong nor with the "blue pill / red pill" or the "to be or not to be" concepts (which I linked). I'm sure this won't stop you though.

Have you checked the "reference guide" in the sticky post ? With the info you give, it's not possible to tell what you've done wrong. nLite is meant to be ran on an original Microsoft XP installation disk, reading the rest of your post, we can easily suspect you ran it on a random iso that you downloaded from "somewhere". What's that bit about "assuming" nLite is trying to integrate Windows Live Essentials when you don't want to install anyway??? So where would nLite get it from ? We're not keen on helping people coming with fairy tales, it's just a waste of time. Also don't ask people to post an iso of XP, that will get you banned. We would need to know exactly what CD you are starting with (what the label says on the physical media) and what you've done in nLite (attach your "Last session.ini" that is in the resulting folder). There are alternative ways to download updates from Microsoft. this for instance: http://xdot.tk/updates.html

How is this red-pill-blue-pillism a 50% probability ? Said who ?...The Matrix....1999? It seems to me that William laid the concept 376 years sooner.

He means flipping a coin to take the decision, as the expression is used in the linked thread. The problem with Jaclaz is that his links lead to threads that contain posts he wrote, that contain links that lead to threads that contain links that... well, you know. He means no one can really tell you which brand is best because the fail rate according to people owning a small amount of drives are irrelevant but according to people owning a lot of drives, they are *really* unpredictable. Only which method is best can be advised.

My question would then be, can you copy them same files back from the 2000 machine? If yes, that would indicate a user rights problem.

Probably the known issue when you set same value for "Owner" and "Computer Name" in the Unattended screens.

I made a quick test with XMediaRecode (also free and portable) it's also quite easy. But as the resolution stays the same, the image is squashed once rotated. Like if you were rotating your avatar, the wings would be 1/2 a cm each and the round bit would look like a rugby ball.

Google seems to have a few answers. I guess you're doing that from Windows Explorer ? Can you create a file on the remote computer then copy it back to the local computer ?

You are obviously not talking about a standard Windows XP setup, so no one can answer your question unless they know of an application that (you don't name) allows installing windows by using/starting a single 5Gig exe file.

What's the name of the file and how did you make it ?

There's an app sticky thread for that.

What is your strategy installing XP from that drive ? I mean what tool did you use to to make it bootable and to copy the install files on it (if any) ? Or is it an USB CD drive ?

I read this last week but I didn't check when the patch was issued. I also don't know if it's relevant to your problem. At 1st sight, yes.

Well, fresh install, no clutter, no AV, no software firewall, latest Flash, Youtube is still crackling out of the box. -> I'm back to 11.2.

How can the OS tell anything if the PC hasn't booted ? If the PC is 2GHz, the label (80GB) is probably right. If you know where the PC comes from, you should know if the drive has been swapped for any reason. I don't see Dell delivering a PC with such a mistake. The first explanation that comes to mind is the capping to 32GB by a jumper to render the drive "compatible" with older systems. Lots of HDD had that ability. However, once you change the jumper, I guess the whole content of the existing partitions will appear as corrupted given the "new" capacity seen by Bios. You could image the partitions back and forth (it shouldn't be that much data if it is max 30Gig).

I would test your RAM and the RAM on the video card.Also see if your CPU goes to 100% when you watch 720p video. Does the site have lots of flash animations ?

CDCheck is an old software but it still does it, is freeware for "non profit use" and is portable.

So... here later, I keep and integrate both the .exe and the .cab ? (or I'd replace a 749kb EXE file by a 2kb CAB file). In your UDC batch file, when the cabs are built, the exe is deleted at the end and only the CAB file remains. This is not the same here ?

I never made them cabs before, I just ran part of your batch file changing the names of the files to extract and of the cab file to build. How do I go here ? I copied your code to an ini file and extracted the KB. Do I need to put everything back in the cab file (that is 6 files plus the Update directory containing 6 more files) or only part of it ?

In the meantime I got all 10 cabs made. I just need to compare the list of ENU and FRA files that I gathered. ...Going top sleep.

It is not as easy as replacing 3 letter in each link. The link location is different for each kb. I'm looking to make a french CD and I'm trying to see what KB are available from a WSUS Offline download. For some missing KB I can't find a download link other than ENU (WindowsXP-KB892130-ENU-x86.exe ?). I'll see further for those needed to make the cab files (3 of the 10 cab files have been built, I guess they are based on non localized files).

Please edit your 1st post to change the title, it is very annoying searching the forum and seeing a thread called "general questions" as you can never remember what was asked and what was answered.

Okay, this catches about 3/5 of it in the testing I've been doing. But not all of what I was looking for. What are the remaining 2/5 ?

How old is "really old"? Does it have a floppy drive ? If yes, you could get the floppy image from Plop Boot and boot USB through it.

Where do you see that ? That "i" looks more Intel than AMD to me.