nLite's WinOS Boot CD customizer
Here's another "note from the field", a post about a tool tested and proven in a customer environment. Ok, so here's the technical backgrounder: Customer orders a Lenovo tower PC and of course it comes pre-loaded with Vista, but with XP downgrade rights. We're wanting to use this as a staging server for document images to be burned to Blu-Ray disks (hey, they hold 25GB of data) using CyberLink's InstantBurn application. We've also ordered a SATA Raid controller and (2) 250GB SATA disks so we can RAID-1 mirror the drives where the images will be stored. The bonus problem is that the system didn't ship with an XP boot CD, but a system recovery CD set with Vista (ie we're going to have to download and install a bunch of video/motherboard/ethernet/etc. drivers after the OS install). So, we put in the XP SP2 boot CD we have and as the system boots we hit F6 to install the 3rd party drivers for the SATA Raid controller and viola, the dreaded "Insert disk into Drive A:" message appears. Hmm, ok, so what system ships with a floppy drive anymore? We consider a USB Floppy drive for a minute and then realize that this early in the boot sequence there are no USB drivers loaded yet; what to do?
Enter the solution for this type of dilemma from nLite. It's actually a very ingenious but simple solution, which makes it even more appealing. We downloaded and installed the nLite software on a laptop and then (after a few minutes of reading) launched the app. Note: it does require the .NET Framwork 2.0 in order to run. It prompted us for our XP CD (it works with Windows 2003 as well) and then a target directory, where it proceeded to copy the entire XP CD; that said, you'll need around 1.2GB of available disk space to use this tool. Next we were presented with a menu of choices for modifying the now copied XP OS and we chose "Install Drivers", clicked "next" and were prompted for the location of the SATA Raid drivers we wanted to install. True confession here it took us a couple of tries to get the right driver set for the controller, but hey it was a learning process. The nLite utility then proceeded to copy the drivers and then the tool presented us with an option to Finish. We relaunched the application and then selected the "Create Bootable ISO" option. The nLite utility then used the now modified on-disk copy of XP to create a bootable CD ISO file. At this point you launch your favorite CD burning tool and burn the ISO to CD.
Next comes the true test of the tool - the boot of our newly created XP CD. While we failed on our first try (wrong drivers), the second try resulted in a boot sequence that saw the SATA Raid controller drivers load and then we were able to proceed with the installation of XP. Mission Accomplished.
The nLite utility has the following features which you may find helpful:
* Service Pack Integration - update that old SP1 boot CD to SP2/SP3.
* Component Removal - remove unwanted components prior to install.
* Unattended Setup - scripting of installation(s)
* Driver Integration
* Hotfixes Integration
* Tweaks
* Services Configuration
* Patches
* Bootable ISO creation
