ICFGNT.DLL Missing after MCE Orbit30 Addon

[bvlach]

This is my first post. I got the dreaded ICFGNT.dll missing at T-15 after sliptreaming Orbit30's 5.2 addon to my MCE 2005. No internet connection. There may be other issues as well. Themes? IE7 crashing! Thirty days ago I hadn't heard of slipstreaming, nLite or Virtual PC. Now after 35 builds and over 100 hours I'm about ready to throw in the towel. All I want is a functioning HTPC OS. I thought I had that after spending good money on MCE2005 SP2. Boy have I learned a lot, but I realize I know very little compared to most of you on this forum. After many frustrating hours trying to integrate SP3, WMP11, IE7 and Rollup2, rather than roll my own, I decided to try Orbit30's MCE 5.2 addon. Alas, it wasn't to be that easy. Now, with little energy left, I'll try to see if anyone here knows of a solution to this elusive problem. I say elusive because I can see from the posts over the past four years that this topic keeps popping up.

I thought I did everything according to prescribed practice:

1) combined disk1 and disk2 into a folder called ROOT on my second hard drive (D:) 841MB (BTW: I purchased the OEM OS from Newegg as MCE2005 SP2, three disks; third disk is KB900325)

2) nLite slipstream SP3 (nLite finds prior hotfixes and asks to remove them before integration; I agree.)???

3) WMP11 Slipstreamer with 10 WMP11 hotfixes

4) nLite slipstream IE7; restart

5) nLite slipstream O30_5.2_Addon; restart

6) nLite slipstream post-SP3 hotfixes (30) and ICH8 AHCI driver; restart

7) nLite burn ISO of ROOT; restart

8) nLite burn DVD-R of ROOT (1.24 GB).

I received no slipstream errors during the integration process.

9) install integrated OS on VM from ISO -> icfgnt.dll missing error at t-15 (registration)

10) install integrated OS on HTPC from DVD-R -> icfgnt.dll missing error at t-15 (registration)

Google is my friend. I've read every item on this forum (and others) relating to this problem, but there doesn't seem to be a clear solution. Some have success with better CD-R media. Others tweaking the txtsetup.sif file. Others restoring removed components. Others not installing WMP11 or IE7. One guy got a new CD-ROM burner to work. Seems like hokus-pokus.

Q1> Does anyone know why this ICFGNT.dll error occurs and the solution?

Q2> Where can I look to see what hotfixes were actually applied and what errors occurred during installation?

Thank you from a very frustrated person.