Jump to content

Slipstreaming multiple service packs is bad.


Recommended Posts

I wanted to see what would happen if I overlapped service packs on each other.

Used:

1. Innotek Virtualbox

2. XP Home CD. SP0. Unattended only.

3. SP3-5503, SP2, SP1a.

4. nLite 1.4.1

Results:

Single Slipstream - SP3

C: 9233 Files, 575 Folders = 1.13GB, 1.00GB on disk.

Triple Slipstream - SP3 + SP2 + SP1

C: 9260 Files, 590 Folders = 1.14GB, 1.01GB on disk.

Count was done immediately post-install. No restart. Nothing modified.

I selected the contents of C: and just got a count from explorer.

What could be causing the size difference?

Is there any way to compare the contents to find the extra junk?

Would it be useful to try HFSLIP too?

Edited by brucevangeorge
Link to comment
Share on other sites


OK here are my pre-install findings:

XP Gold iso size = 492 megs
XP SP1a iso size = 507 megs
XP SP2 iso size = 582 megs
XP SP1a + SP2 iso size = 594 megs
XP SP1a + SP2 + SP3 iso size = 624 megs
XP SP3 iso size = 593 megs

Total wasted space with all 3 packs? = 31 megs

Total size gain from XP gold to SP3 = 101 megs

Where are all the extra files coming from? Mostly drivers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was going to try to do a dump of the contents of each machine onto a USB stick.

This makes it much easier.

I'll do this on the source and try to remove the ~30mb before it decompresses on the HD.

Edited by brucevangeorge
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 6 months later...

I've been looking for some info about having multiple service packs on the same I386 directory (i.e.: 2k + SP3 + SP2 + SP1).

What are the impact? Will this works fine or should I just use the latest service packs? You are saying that spX.cab content drivers and some other junk, but what is that junk?

What I need is I386 files on file server, so our users can get the cds when installing new services on their servers. Every servers have their own version of service packs.

thanks,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

SP1 brought some new drivers in SP1.cab

SP2 brought some additional drivers, so SP2.cab contains SP1 drivers + SP2 drivers.

The same goes to SP3.

So if you slipstream the three SP's, you get three SPx.cab's, two with redundant driver files.

I could be mistaken about SP2 containing SP1 drivers, but SP3 contains the previous ones (thus you can use it with RTM version of Windows XP).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For now, we have multiple servers with different version of sps. Those servers always ask for CDs when clients install new package. So we want some script to change the reg key automatically to a file server.

We wanted to know if there could be some issue if we install some package with sp2 if that server only have sp1. Because some files has different date. I mean, slipstreaming service pack doesn't really add a cab and cat file only, right?

This is our main concern.

thanks for your reply,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been looking for some info about having multiple service packs on the same I386 directory (i.e.: 2k + SP3 + SP2 + SP1).

What are the impact? Will this works fine or should I just use the latest service packs? You are saying that spX.cab content drivers and some other junk, but what is that junk?

What I need is I386 files on file server, so our users can get the cds when installing new services on their servers. Every servers have their own version of service packs.

thanks,

Only slipstream ONE service pack in your install since SP2 supercedes SP1 and SP3 supercedes SP2.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...