How to Nlite by DIY?

[Engineering]

Is there are way to perform the preset tasks that the Nlite software does but manually by browsing the Windows setup folder and doing so without any third party application?

[Pookey]

Yes, everything that nLite does is doable manually, however it would take ALOT longer. You can manually edit the unattended file and can manually slipstream each service pack and hotfix. You can also patch different files and modify the services that windows runs.

[Martin H]

There's no reason to reinvent the wheel and do it manually IMHO, but nonetheless, run the following command-line from your XPCD folder to retrieve and expand all the infs from I386 into a _infs folder:

for /f %g in ('dir /b /a-d /on I386\*.in_') do expand -r I386\%g _infs

Then for starters open sysoc.inf and syssetup.inf and comment out unwanted infs or blank them, and comment out there referenced files in txtsetup.sif and dosnet.inf(only needed if doing network/dos installs), and you need a patched syssetup.dll to remove the signing... for doing further reduction, then go though the rest of the infs...

I just use nLite though