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A quicker way to run installs


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I have another question about slipstreaming an installation CD.

As a home user, I don't have the situation of having to run installs to a large number of PCs, or even of having to run the installs very often. However, the idea of not having to go though all the driver updating and hotfix patching whenever I do an installation appeals to me.

So instead of having to burn a new CD every time I want to do a new installation, to get all the latest drivers and patches, would it be possible to burn the CD in such a way that it pointed to a drive that is already on the system as its source for most of the installation files? Then all I'd have to do is keep that up to date with the latest drivers.

The first problem I can forsee with this is how to judge how the new installation would allocate drive letters, but could this be countered by specifying the pathnames in the same way that they are listed in Boot.ini, by including the controller number/drive number/partition number in the pathname?

I remember doing something similar to this with a Windows 98 installation, by copying the Win98 installation CD (and the SE upgrade disc) onto a partition on the hard drive, and then running the setup after booting the computer into DOS (from an old rescue disc, I think), with the added benefit that the whole installation process went much faster than it did when running from CD.

Ideally, I would like to know if there is a way that I can boot from a Floppy (or preferably a CF Card on a USB connection (or does this have to be a USB pen-drive in particular to work) so that I'm not having to swap disks) or maybe a CD, to an XP command line, and then run the installation process from the slipstreamed and RVM'd and BTS'd installation source on my hard drive?

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2nd Hard Drive / Partition = 1 option All my Drivers/Applications on a 2nd HD

I been doing that with my App for several years including any of the others

Although its not 100 of what you ask because I still burn a CD/DVD but I do that with RW so I can burn again till I get the way I want.

There are ways to run WINNT32.EXE with command line options like

/unattend[num]:[answer_file]

Performs a fresh installation in unattended Setup mode. The specified answer_file provides Setup with your custom specifications.

Course then you'd have to have something that would boot and recognize NTFS file system. Allthough I haven't done that in a long time so I'm rusty as heck.

Take my name and put a .com on it and you will find first line above if you want.

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