Making a Bootable Windows 2000 CD with Service Pack Integrated

[championsleeper]

i have windows 2000 with service pack 4 and a number of patches
installed. all good !

i used windowsupdate to install the patches and service packs. what i
want to do is create a bootable w2k cd with these service packs
included, a concept known as streamlining from what i have read this
evening.

my questions are (probably predictably):
- where does windowsupdate locate these service packs ?
- can i use the service pack files installed in this manner to create
my streamlined boot cd ?
- where is the update.exe and hotfix.exe file ? the documents i've
read have said that these files are installed as part of the service
packs but i cannot find them.

had some horrible problems with h/w in the past and this is the final
step in hardening my home system so i do not have to go through all of
this kind of thing again !

any help gratefully appreciated.

ciao

 

[GA]

If you are doing this for one computer platform, you are better off using
ghost or drive image to make an image of your system, then burn that to cd -
it can be bootable.
The slipstream method is far from perfect or easy. It is intended for
multiple installations of Windows on different hardware platforms. But if
you don't have the hardware differences to worry about, imaging is the more
practical method.

 

[championsleeper]

Thanks for that. This is something I want to do to my home PC as part
of my new backup strategy (bad experience with failures recently). I'm
not too keen to spend money on ghost or disk image to create an image
which is why I considered streamlining. Can you (or anyone else)
recommend cost-free software which can be used for imaging ?

 

[GA]

As a backup stategy, I guess you are limiting yourself to what the operating
system provides, which isn't much. If you think of having a reliable backup
as insurance, it is money well spent. Think about how long it would take
you to restore your system using your method versus the 30 minutes or so
using an image or tape backup. If time is money to you, then you've already
paid for the cost of the software with just one restore.

Sorry, I cannot recommend anything free, but I suppose you could search the
internet for backup utilities.