i'm a beginner

[atomicrabbit]

I'm interested in in making an unattended xp install with integrated application install and have done a bit of research a while ago, along with following the tutorial here. I found the tutorials to be very unnecessarily complicated for the outcome. I actually gave up 3/4 of the way through because it was so complicated... I especially found manually integrating external applications annoyingly hard because if any new versions came out fo certain applications, it would be hard to re-integrate the new versions. Is it better to use nLite? If so, could someone point me to a good tutorial for it.

Also, I'm looking to integrate hotfixes/updates which I've obviously found here. I know basically how to do this using RyanVM's Integrator already.

My overall question is, which is better? nLite or the manual way. Is there even a difference. Could someone offer me some direction?

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

depends on what you want to do really. If you found the tutorials complicated, i would stay stick with nlite until you get a better understanding of the windows setup process and how it works.

the best advice i can give you is to use a VM (VMware, VirtualPC, Virtualbox) for testing as simplifies the process dramatically.

[atomicrabbit]

it's not so much that it's complicated... rather that it's tedious for what it accomplishes.

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

i guess it depends on what your using it for. If your using it on a few machines i wouldnt spend too much time on it but in my situation, I install windows XP on average about every other week and if i had to wait for windows update and manually update every one of them, i would go nuts (well actually my WSUS server would prolly catch them but not without issues im sure)

[atomicrabbit]

would you suggest to slipstream sp3 final? If I did, would I have to install any extra components? WMP 11? anything from RyanVM's site? I know there is a WGA addon, a wmp addon, etc etc. Is this all included in SP3?

Edited April 30, 2008 by atomicrabbit