On Thu, 3 Sep 2009 10:52:14 -0500, "BillW50" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>In news:(E-Mail Removed),
>mm typed on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:19:17 -0400:
>>
>> But why is it necessary to use more than XCopy, XXCopy, or Drag and
>> Drop in Windows Explorer? After extracting the files from the XP or
>> 2000 installation disk and doing the same from the SP. (Plus adding
>> the bootimage that is described in
>> http://www.derangedcoder.net/program...WindowsXP.html
>> step 5 and apparently needed for this sort of thing.)
>>
>>> I needed Windows 2000 SP4 slipstreamed
>>> because I needed SP4 because it allows to be installed from USB
>>> devices. On netbooks, that is very important.
>>
>> Absolutely.
>
>Okay what about this idea then? I personally believe you should have a
>spare hard drive anyway. I don't know what kind of machine you are
>trying to fix, so whether this would be easy to swap out or not depends
>on the machine. Once you have a spare drive in there, you can install
>2000 or XP or whatever. Create a nLite of Windows 2000 SP4 and you are
>all done.
I'll work on this idea. I have a win2000 computer, to borrow or
maybe to keep, with 2 hard and 100 empty gigs on one of them. I have
software now, and when I have time and have learned how to make the
partion active, I will make another partition on that drive.
> So how does that plan sound?
Pretty good.
But of course, I also want to pursue my plan.

Your suggestion
about why Xcopy wouldn't work had me up against the wall for a while.
I had to think about it and I had to go to the other computer to
investigate more closely what files were in the set of extracted files
from the Installation Disk and the SP CDs.
You cautioned about CAB files and registry entries.
So I looked at the extracted files for XP, SP2, and SP3. (SP2 includes
SP1, but SP3 doesn't include SP2.) (I'm sure I would see the same
sort of thing for win2000 and its SPs.)
CA_ files CAB files Date of most files
XP 15 10 8/23/2001
SP2 10 3 7/17 to 8/4 2004
SP3 9 3 4/14/2008
Further examination showed that some of the CA_ files in SPs had the
same name as in previous CDs, and some were new. Since there were 15
CA_ files to begin with, plainly some of them never get updated by
SP2, and examination showed that some of that subset didn't get
updated by SP3 either. However, two new files in SP2, MSN7.CA_ and
MSN8.CA_ did get replacement files in SP3
Further examination of the CAB files showed that there was no update
for Drivers.cab, the biggest of them all at 77 Megs.
However the same two cab files were updated in SP2 and SP3,
mmsetup.cab and fp40ext.cab. I don't know what these files do, but I
don't think I have too. Microsoft set it up so that they are replaced
by the service pack. Some other part of the service pack is
responsible for expanding them and installing them, isn't that
true????
Most ca_ and cab files got bigger in later SPs. That's not surprising
to me. But one file stayed the same length, and one file got shorter.
Just because it's the same length, that doesn't mean nothing inside
changed. I'm sure it did. But the others where nothing changed
weren't included in the SP. That's one practical reason one can't
just get a free service pack and run windows from it.
The third CAB files were sp2.cab and sp3.cab respectively. They were
the biggest after drivers.cab, at 19 and 20 megs respectively. I
suspect they contain a little of everything, including probably more
drivers, since surely there are more drivers created in the 80 months
from XP to XPSP3
So the question remains, is the update.exe program, which is used in 3
or likely all 4** currrent methods, clever enough to open a cab file
and go about modifying what's inside, with what's inside a cab file in
a later SP. I think MS has set this up so it's not necessary. That
seems like the simple way to do it.
**On the web I came across a 4th routine, but at its heart was
update.exe.
What about the fact that there is both an SP2.cab and SP3.cab. If I
properly slipstreamed SP3 into the XP-SP2 slipsteam output, would
that get rid of SP2.cab? Why would it? Slipstreaming surely doesn't
get rid of drivers.cab, which is 77 megs, bigger than anything that
could supplant it. I think it keeps all the cab files, modifying some
with later versions, and somewhere in the list of things to install
(also a file) is both sp2.cab and sp3.cab.
As to registry updates, they aren't done by slipstreaming, are they?
Slipstreaming only provides a list of which parts of the registry
shoudl be changed and what changes should be applied, and something at
the time of executing the SP CD or the slipstreamed CD causes these
changes to be applied.
Now maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is something we haven't thought of,
or you did think of it and my argument that you are wrong is faulty. I
wish I could ask the guy who wrote Autostreamer. It just occurred to
me: Maybe I can, or maybe I can ask some of the three other guys who
have webpages about this, like derangedcoder. Maybe I can ask them
all. I should go to guys most likely to know little details about
this stuff. Unless someone here knows the answers.
And I could also just try it my way. It shouldn't take more than 10
minutes (not counting thinking time, and the bootimage step, and the
create .iso step and the burn CD step.) And when I'm done, even if
it seems to install, I might not know if it works completely or not.
Maybe I'll both try it and also write those guys. I intend to report
back to you, even to the XP group if that's okay, what they say and
what my own results are.
BTW, XXCopy is a much more powerful version of XCOPY, written by one
man and given away as freeware. It has just about every parameter you
could imagine***, and if you imagine one it hasn't got, you can tell
the author and he really might put it in. It has a /clone parameter,
but he explains what individual-function parameters that is equivalent
to, so you can if you want, make a modification to /clone. You can
turn off any parameter that's on, or turn on any parameter that's off.
There is extensive online and downloadable text help
Try
www.xcopy.com and there is also a mailing list on Yahoo lists
called XXCOPY, which provides very good advice on uses of the program.
The author participates a lot, last time I was there.
***I'm not sure if it can copy the directory creation date, but no
other file-by-file copier does that either afaik. I asked about it
once. Maybe he's done it by now.
Other than Autostreamer, every slipstreamer method I have seen uses
XCopy. That's what I've used too, but XXCopy was designed to be fully
compatible and congruent with all XCopy switches and parameters, etc.
P&M