Modifying a Windows install CD

One of the problems with being a computer person is that everyone expects you to fix their problems. A friend of a friend's laptop died on her and she wanted it fixed. I got the laptop and found that the laptop just bluescreened no matter what you did on bootup. Obviously, this was not a good sign.

I rummaged around for my assortment of XP installation CD's and they'd all boot up, but when it came to install to the hard drive, they call said "no disks found" or some such nonsense. I had to pop this disk out and found that it's a SATA drive and I had a suspicion that the drivers for the laptop SATA controller were not on my generic XP installation CD's.

I decided to call up Gateway and was promptly told that they could only provide me limited support. My options were to boot into Windows and do a system restore, which I couldn't if it blue screened, get the drivers to a floppy (no floppy), or get the Gateway version of XP. He told me there were no other options. I could purchase the "correct" version of XP from the Gateway site.

Fortunately, I was not the first person with this issue and found a tool called nLite. (http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html) This allows you to customize your installation of XP by taking an existing copy of XP and merging it with service packs or required drivers and it creates an ISO file for you to burn. I must say, I was impressed. The best part was watching the XP CD boot up and recognizing the hard drive.

For people not willing to go to Vista or Linux, this provides another way to extend the life of XP until the migration to Linux, Mac, or Windows 7.