If you have ever had the joy of reinstalling Windows on your pc, to then have to download all the drivers on another PC to get it online, then have to spend hours on Windows Update installing updates, rebooting, installing more updates, more rebooting etc, then this is the guide for you.

I reinstall Windows quite regularly as part of my job, so anything that will make this process less painful is welcome. I have created a Windows CD that answers all the setup questions for me, and has all the latest Windows updates pre installed, which makes installing Windows an almost completely unattended process. This allows me to turn machines around and get them back out to the classrooms much faster than doing it the normal way.

So I decided to throw together a little guide on how to make one of these CDs. You can use this guide as a basis and change bits and piece to suit your own needs. For instance if you are only making the disc for one PC, you can slipstream in all the drivers for your computer, saving having to look for them after a reinstall. I prefer to leave drivers out as they are updated quite regularly and I like to run the latest versions (with the exception of LAN or network card drivers, as having these in the CD means you can get online instantly after install to download the rest of your drivers).

This tutorial must be carried out on a Windows PC, as the tools needed are all Windows only.

Things you will need:

Once you have all these items, start by installing nLite. I won’t patronise you by talking you through a program installation. After this you can optionally install the Windows Media Player slipstreamer if you wish to have WMP11 as part of your CD.

Using 7zip or your other 7z compatible unzipper, unzip the DriverPacks LAN pack to your hard drive. Anywhere will do, just make sure you remember where as you will need this folder later in the guide.

Now fire up nLite. Select your language and then point it towards the location of your XP CD. It will ask you to provide a location to save the XP CD files to. I recommend making a new folder in C: called nlitexp. You can place these files anywhere you like, just for the rest of the guide substitute c:\nlitexp for your path if you do. This step will take maybe 10 minutes or so depending on the speed of your CD drive and PC.

Select XP CD source

Select XP CD source

The next screen will ask if you wish to load a previous session. As you do not have any previous ones, just click next.

Now you will be given options as to what you would like to customise. I recommend you make the selections as in the image below. Service pack, Hotfixes, Drivers, Unattended, and Bootable ISO. Then click next.

Select custom options

Select custom options

Now you will be asked to provide the location of the downloaded service pack. Simply browse to wherever you downloaded the Microsoft Service Pack 3 Network Installer to and select it.

nlitestep5

Next you will be asked for any updates or hotfixes. Click insert and choose the Xable SP3 update pack you downloaded earlier. This will now appear in the list as shown below. Click next.

Xable Updates Pack

Xable Updates Pack

Driver adding time. Select Insert and choose “multiple driver folder”. Now browse to where you extract the DriverPack LAN pack earlier. There will be a folder called “D”. Choose this and hit OK. On the window that appears you will see a list of all the drivers contained in that folder. Just click the All button and hit OK. You drivers list should now be populated with all the drivers and you can proceed to the next step.

Drivers added

Drivers added

This is the unattended step. This is the interesting part. Just go through all the menus and tabs, and fill in as much or as little as you want. The more you fill in the more unattended the install will be. No more having to sit around waiting to tell the Windows installer what timezone you are in every single time!!

Unattended section

Unattended section

After clicking next, nLite will start the slipstreaming process. Go make some tea, this can take some time depending on the options selected and the speed of your PC.

nlitestep10

On completion you should be at the ISO/burn screen. I always make an ISO as opposed to burning the CD. This allows me to boot the ISO in a virtual machine to test it first before burning it. And it allows you to keep an image of the CD so you can burn more copies in the future.

nlitestep11

Once the ISO creation is complete you can burn it using your favourite burning app (mine is currently the excellent free ImgBurn).

Now just pop it into your machine you wish to wipe and reinstall Windows on, answer the first few questions about partitions to install on and then go do something nice while Windows installs unattended!! Then when you get back smile at how you don’t have to install a million updates and restart 40 times!

Have fun!