XP SP2 Wierd Glitches

[Jedakiah]

Howdy , wonderful program this community helped create. I'm glad to be a member.

I have had some troubles with my nLited install. After my fourth attempt at getting a bootable nLited install I succeeded. Primarily I needed to integrate SP2 with nforce & other SATA / RAID drivers. I have successfully done that on my 7th attempt (yay).

Back to the problems I encountered. I did not remove any components as this had previously caused the install to crash (In particular the lack of uxtheme.dll, which I did not remove but did want the patched version). I started with a fresh CD, integrated SP2 & some drivers. I also filled out all the unattended stuff and selected all manner of tweaks. Install went very smooth and only prompted me for a few things that I purposely left blank. It did "lock up" at 9 minutes for about an hour. But I "burped" it by ejecting the cd and reinserting later. However once I got into Windows many strange things happened:

• When opening Internet Explorer it asked me if I wanted to open with a text editor or Windows Picture Viewer.
  
• No "extra" services would automatically startup. Even though I did not change a single service option in nLite!
  
• I installed my Wifi card's drivers and attempted to connect to Windows update. I later figured out that I also had to start the network service. But my Wifi card would not negotiate an IP on my network after connecting. Even after I reinstalled with it's software.
  

I tried a number of things in Windows to get these problems fixed. But I finally just gave up, redid my install disc where it only integrated and didn't tweak anything, including unattended options. I got this to recognize my RAID array and install fine. But with none of those fancy tweaks or unattended spiffyness I so quickly got accustomed to. So what did I do wrong?

EDIT: I would also like to integrate all the updates since SP2 into my install. But I'm not sure how I would go about this. Can you point me in the right direction.

Edited January 17, 2008 by Jedakiah

[Martin H]

Sorry, i don't know the answer to your first question, other than to simply recommend that you start over completely fresh with a clean reinstall of nLite and a clean source, and then to remake the ISO with your 'Last Session.ini' preset, but for your second question, then you either need to download all the Post-SP2 updates by yourself, or to download a post-SP2 update pack and then you just add all the updates, or the update pack, into nLite's 'Update Packs and Addons' section.

If you decide to use a post-SP2 update pack, then you have two main choises; Xable's or RyanVM's post-sp2 update packs. The difference beeing, that Xable's pack is a light pack, which only features high-priority updates, whereas RyanVM's pack features both high-priority, optional and unofficial updates.

Other than this, then RyanVM's pack also has some extra stuff included other than just updates, whereas Xable's pack hasen't, but instead he makes addon's available with extra stuff(RyanVM also makes extra addons available).

Finally, then RyanVM's pack uses the QFE branch updates, whereas Xable's pack uses the GDR branch(except for one reported buggy GDR update). The difference between GDR and QFE branch updates, is that the QFE branch is cumulative and includes both the GDR branch update + all previously released hotfixes for the updated files, whereas the GDR branch only includes the GDR branch update.

Hotfixes are developed quickly to provide fast support to specific customer situations, but they possibly hasen't gone through as thorough a testing phase as the GDR branch updates which is specifically developed to fix wide-spread issues.

Xable's Update Pack :

http://xable.net/xp-sp2-update-pack-contents.php

RyanVM's Update Pack :

http://www.ryanvm.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5761

If not wanting to use a post-SP2 update pack, then i would recommend using jcarle's 'Windows Updates Downloader' to download all the post-SP2 updates and then integrate them into your Windows source with nLite : http://wud.jcarle.com/

Edited January 18, 2008 by Martin H