I only want to have 6 specific processes running during my first WinXP SP2 boot.

Not sure if nLite can do that. Is there any way I can manually edit something before slipstreaming to make only those services be set to AUTO?

I've used this page Black Vipers registry page for making custom registry file for Services.

Maybe you want to give it a go.

Good Luck.

I cannot tell you how to slipstream this... but you could at the point where the installation wants to restart the box for the first time... take control and modify the registry to RunOnce a batch file which would contain your services commands. I've not done it and have only researched a little for your question but I think this would be done in the batch file using SC command. No doubt someone of greater ability than I could write a script to do the same thing.

I will use the Alerter service for these examples:

This will make the Alerter service run as a service that must be manually started.

sc config Alerter start= demand

This will make the Alerter service a service that automatically starts each time the computer is restarted and runs even if no one logs on to the computer.

sc config Alerter start= auto

This will make the Alerter service a service that cannot be started.

sc config Alerter start= disabled

You don't have to run this from a batch file you can open a command window and play with it to see what it does. It worked fine on my box.

Link To Command Line Reference A-Z Definitions and Explanations