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after running nlite over 100 times on my home pc...


undevelopeder

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...in order to streamline the use of nlite to install Windows XP Home SP2 (2002) for my personal use, I've come to a few conclusions that might help other people customizing the install CD for use on their own single home computer:

1) I finally settled on running nlite several times piecemeal in order to alter Dino's procedure order. The second and later times I loaded the modified files off my hard drive. First I ran only Unattended to select the CPU type and enter the product code. Then I ran it again to remove unnecessary hardware components. Then I ran it to remove basic install CD support for things like sound and video, which I can slipstream third-party drivers for. Then I slipstreamed select hofixes, including IE7. Then I removed certain components I find a nuisance, such as Search Assistant. Then I put in my tweaks.

2) If you know your CPU type you can delete a great deal of useless junk from the Hardware tab of Components. This includes quite a few items Dino has in red. For example, I have an ACPI uniprocessor CPU, so I can safely get rid of Hercules and AMD support right off the bat. When I reran nlite the list of components had changed and I was able to pare them down even further. This makes the Setup portion of install much smoother, faster and cleaner because the installer isn't loading a bunch of stuff it's just going to have to delete.

3) I possess slipstreamable third-party drivers for some of my hardware, such as sound and video, so I removed basic sound and video support from Components before slipstreaming the drivers. This made the install much cleaner. In the case of my faxmodem, although I deleted modem support before slipstreaming the driver, modem support somehow got reintegrated during the driver slipstream process, although I have no idea from where. Also, I used to have to update my USB drivers through Device Manager before my printer install software could detect my USB printer; but once I had removed *all* printer support, including the USB printer item in Components, that was no longer necessary.

4) Using my existing activated install of XP, I went to the Microsoft Download Center and used Advanced Search to find only the hotfixes I was interested in. I searched for "Windows XP" with the filter of "All" for OSs, sorted by date order, with 50 listings per window. By opening download and knowledge base pages in new windows, I was able to find the 20 or so hotfixes that I was interested in. Not everything you can download from MDC works as a hotfix, but lots of it does. You can slipstream IE7 but not WMP11. With IE7 it doesn't matter whether a hotfix was released before or after IE7 was released; nlite is smart enough to slipstream everything in the right order, so you only have to run the hotfixer once. But unless you want a great deal of clutter and crap in your installed OS, the hotfix application should occur after you've pared down your components and installed third-party drivers. With WMP11, unfortunately, you still have to rely on Microsoft Update making decisions for you, but at least use Custom install. Note that slipstreaming doesn't work for .NET Framework 2.0, which has been superseded and is now basically freeware. You still have to grow a beard to the floor waiting for it to install off Update or from the redistributable.

5) Because the component list is dynamic--it changes every time you rerun nlite--I settled on waiting until I had a fully up to date set of raw files on my hard drive before removing nuisance components. The tweaks list is also dynamic, so I found it useful to run nlite separately for tweaks as a last step.

6) The maximized compression and ISO optimization actually slowed down my install because the files on the CD were overcompressed.

7) I could skip a lot of yunque at the start of install by removing all partitions from my target hard drive before firing up my computer. My BIOS has an automatic A: C: D: boot sequence, so if there is nothing in the floppy or on the hard drive it automatically boots off CD and goes straight to the "setup is checking your system configuration" page. I haven't been able to find a bootable partition nuker I can afford, so I used my old DOS 6.22 install disk, which starts off by nuking the primary partition and asking you to reboot, so I just popped out the floppy and pressed enter. During Windows XP Home install you do have to delete the 2-gig DOS partition created by the DOS install diskette, but that's only a minor nuisance.

8) The Unattended portion of nlite is unspeakably flaky and pretty much useless. The only things it consistently remembers to do is put in your product code and choose your CPU type. It forgets all other things almost at random. The theme and background you boot into are a total crapshoot. I recommend that the Unattended portion be replaced by a simple GUI that asks you for your product code and CPU type.

All replies warmly invited.

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you should start with remove unnecessary hardware components.

Just configure you bios to boot with DVD-rom firts,

And for uour point 8, I disagree. I use all of the options

And who Dino ? Your comment are not clear to me.

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if you remove files for a UI and then select it to boot from, of course it wont work. i just use the classic version, no issues, remembers everything i set fine.

maybe you should try a slower burning speed, or just setting it afterwards. personal problems aren't necessarily widespread or common.

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Seems to me that you spend a lot of time just for gaining a few seconds.

No, I gain a clean system with no generic garbage on it, just the system files that are relevant to my particular computer. That means a cleaner-running system that works better and lasts longer between reinstalls. I also gain a theftproof install CD, because it won't work on anyone's system except mine--and it's not only theftproof but doesn't threaten any company's proprietary interests. And I gain knowledge about and experience in home-use system development without having to spend a single day in school. Not that there is such a school anyway. Google "home-use system development" and similar phrases and see what you come up with.

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you should start with remove unnecessary hardware components.

Just configure you bios to boot with DVD-rom firts,

And for uour point 8, I disagree. I use all of the options

And who Dino ? Your comment are not clear to me.

I started with a runthrough of only selecting the processor type because I thought it would dynamically change what hardware components are listed in red, but because nlite is written with the wrong focus it doesn't do that. Even if you select ACPI uniprocessor CPU in Unattended and recompile and rerun, things like AMD processor support are still in red in Components. So my first step now is a combination of selecting the processor type and removing all unnecessary hardware components and letting nlite recompile. When I run nlite again the "ACPI uniprocessor driver" in hardware components has been replaced by "Intel driver." Similar dynamic changes occur to other components and to the Tweaks section. You should definitely do Tweaks as a last step in a separate nlite process because the available tweaks change when most Component, some driver, and a few hotfix and addon processes are recompiled, but you don't see the changes in the tweaks until after the recompilation.

I could reboot, run setup to configure my BIOS to run from my optical drive first, reboot, run Windows Setup, wait until it restatrs Windows, twiddle my wenoir while staring at the "press any key to boot from CD" message until it goes away and it boots from the hard drive, do the same thing over again when it runs the final install, then reboot again and go into setup and tell it to boot from the hard drive first, then reboot into my OS. Or I could be totally dumb and have a system that doesn't require me to press a key to boot from CD but automatically does when the optical drive is first in the queue, so that Setup runs over and over again in an endless cycle until I finally change the boot sequence to run from the hard drive. Or I could do what I do, which is to pop in a floppy-based hard drive partition nuker, wait for it to ask me to press enter to reboot, pop out the floppy, press enter, and then watch as Setup goes straight to the hardware configuration page. Which sounds best to you?

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Even if you select ACPI uniprocessor CPU in Unattended and recompile and rerun, things like AMD processor support are still in red in Components.

ACPI doesn't mean "non AMD".

I could reboot, run setup to configure my BIOS to run from my optical drive first, reboot, run Windows Setup, wait until it restatrs Windows, twiddle my wenoir while staring at the "press any key to boot from CD" message until it goes away and it boots from the hard drive, do the same thing over again when it runs the final install, then reboot again and go into setup and tell it to boot from the hard drive first, then reboot into my OS. Or I could be totally dumb and have a system that doesn't require me to press a key to boot from CD but automatically does when the optical drive is first in the queue, so that Setup runs over and over again in an endless cycle until I finally change the boot sequence to run from the hard drive. Or I could do what I do, which is to pop in a floppy-based hard drive partition nuker, wait for it to ask me to press enter to reboot, pop out the floppy, press enter, and then watch as Setup goes straight to the hardware configuration page. Which sounds best to you?

When reinstalling, most people (I speak for myself) don't change their partition setting, they just quick format the system drive, so "nuking the partitions" or using the Windows CD to Delete and create partitions is not considered as mandatory nor standard step of install procedure.

You don't have to be dumb just to prove your point :D. You could just keep CD/DVD boot first (doesn't make much difference in boot time, and if you are so in optimisation, you know how leaving a media in the reader slows Explorer so you don't) and let it run like that, hitting the key at the beginning. I personally use the F12 key that pops up a boot menu on most recent PCs (I boot from HDD by default) so I don't need the "press any key" message. Anyway, without or without message, the difference is minimal; either I need to press it and it's straight at boot or I don't need to press it and I'm not waiting in front of the machine to check how many time it's taking.

Your point 6 seemed obvious, and you seem pointlessly harsh on 8) as well.

a cleaner-running system that works better and lasts longer between reinstalls

Still you reinstalled 100 times ? :angel (just kidding) :P

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Even if you select ACPI uniprocessor CPU in Unattended and recompile and rerun, things like AMD processor support are still in red in Components.

ACPI doesn't mean "non AMD".

I could reboot, run setup to configure my BIOS to run from my optical drive first, reboot, run Windows Setup, wait until it restatrs Windows, twiddle my wenoir while staring at the "press any key to boot from CD" message until it goes away and it boots from the hard drive, do the same thing over again when it runs the final install, then reboot again and go into setup and tell it to boot from the hard drive first, then reboot into my OS. Or I could be totally dumb and have a system that doesn't require me to press a key to boot from CD but automatically does when the optical drive is first in the queue, so that Setup runs over and over again in an endless cycle until I finally change the boot sequence to run from the hard drive. Or I could do what I do, which is to pop in a floppy-based hard drive partition nuker, wait for it to ask me to press enter to reboot, pop out the floppy, press enter, and then watch as Setup goes straight to the hardware configuration page. Which sounds best to you?

When reinstalling, most people (I speak for myself) don't change their partition setting, they just quick format the system drive, so "nuking the partitions" or using the Windows CD to Delete and create partitions is not considered as mandatory nor standard step of install procedure.

You don't have to be dumb just to prove your point :D. You could just keep CD/DVD boot first (doesn't make much difference in boot time, and if you are so in optimisation, you know how leaving a media in the reader slows Explorer so you don't) and let it run like that, hitting the key at the beginning. I personally use the F12 key that pops up a boot menu on most recent PCs (I boot from HDD by default) so I don't need the "press any key" message. Anyway, without or without message, the difference is minimal; either I need to press it and it's straight at boot or I don't need to press it and I'm not waiting in front of the machine to check how many time it's taking.

Your point 6 seemed obvious, and you seem pointlessly harsh on 8) as well.

a cleaner-running system that works better and lasts longer between reinstalls

Still you reinstalled 100 times ? :angel (just kidding) :P

There's lots about computers that I don't know, and I'm sorry if I jumped to stupid conclusions. If that means I've been labelled as a dumb lamer, feel free to tell me to shut up and go away.

Let me say one constructively-toned thing that might convince you otherwise. An unattended install as in the Unattended part of nlite requires prior user input to automate the install process. Most of the rest of nlite makes changes to the thing that is asking for that user input. Those are two opposite things, because the former tries to minimize human involvement while the other needs to maximize it. It's important to test every major change along the way so you have a hope of knowing where things screwed up and where you have to back up to to start over from. I've been trying to do that with nlite because it enables someone with limited programming knowledge to automate some difficult tasks and concentrate on the testing process. If all that was already taken care of back when snakes used to walk, then I'm not sure I understand why nlite is still designed and advertised the way it is.

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re: #4: i install .net 2.0 at t-13, and i think i have been for over a year.

re: #6: max CAB compression is the same compression used on retail CDs. ISO optimization has no effect on the resulting CD at all. all it does is generate a more efficient ISO which will save you a few MBs of hard drive space.

re: #7: i had a hard time decoding this one, but xp setup does support automatic partitioning. AFAIK nlite doesn't support it because it is potentially a huge bummer. forget your autopart windows cd in the drive and you lose all your data.

re: #8: i've been using nlite for a long time (still have a couple RCs in my downloads folder) and have never had it 'forget' unattended settings. although i've used it extensively, i have yet to make 100 different builds.

your process seems strange to me and may very well be the source of your problems. i think it's generally accepted that nlite is meant to be run once on a source, anything more is experimental. if you can't get it right in one run you should either revert your source to it's pre-nlite status, or start over with a clean source.

that's how i do it anyways and i've always had rock solid builds, minus a few expected glitches with component removals.

obviously since you've discovered the wonder of nlite you're not a dumb lamer. i think a better approach for addressing this forum would be to ask for help on any specific issues you have instead of listing things you think are wrong. a more positive approach will yield much more positive results.

nlite has seen a lot of development over the years and is reliable and stable.

Edited by electroglyph
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you should start with remove unnecessary hardware components.

Just configure you bios to boot with DVD-rom firts,

And for uour point 8, I disagree. I use all of the options

And who Dino ? Your comment are not clear to me.

You don't know who is Dino???? :w00t::w00t::lol: :lol:

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