Microsoft puts out updates every now and then in the form of a Service Pack.  Service Packs are a rollup collection of updates.  If you are a system builder or frequently need to reinstall the operating system slipstreaming is an easy way to speed up the reinstall process.  I’ve researched the following procedure for easily slipstreaming our our XP CD, however you can easily use this process for other operating systems like Windows Vista or Windows 7.

Prerequisites’

You’ll need to collect some simple things… download the Service Pack you want to integrate into the CD you have.  Our office uses PowerISO to manipulate CD images… so I’d suggest purchasing it over at http://www.poweriso.com, it’s only $30.

I take ISO images of all of my CDs, that way I don’t have to mess with CD’s…

XP SP2:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=049C9DBE-3B8E-4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A&displaylang=en

XP SP3:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=5B33B5A8-5E76-401F-BE08-1E1555D4F3D4&displaylang=en

If the links are broken, simply go to http://www.microsoft.com and within the websites’ search bar put “download Windows XP SP2” and you’ll easily find it.

Part 1:  Building Directories

The first step is to build a directory structure to hold the files that will be used in the CD creation process. It’s a simple structure, requiring nothing more than a few folders.  I created the folders shown below, located on Drive C, and using PowerISO, extracted the XP-SP1 CD-image I wanted to work on to the first directory.  Then download the SP into the second directory.

c:\XP
c:\XP-SP

Part 2:  Copying and Extracting Files

If you downloaded Windows XP SP2 from Microsoft, it will most likely be named WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe. Copy the file to the c:\XP-SP folder if it wasn’t downloaded there initially.

Open a cmd prompt, browse to the c:\XP-SP  directory and execute the following command:  WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe -x

The prompt for where to store the extracted files shown here will open. I used the default c:\XP-SP.

Part 3: Updating The Windows Share

Apply the extracted Service Pack to Windows XP files in the XP folder that were copied in Part 2 as follows:

Within the open cmd window, browse to c:\XP-SP\i386\Update and execute the following command: Update.exe /integrate:C:\XP

As shown below, Service Pack 2 is being integrated into the Windows installation folder.

Successful completion of the integration process.

Your now all set… delete the c:\XP-SP directory and your c:\XP directory now contains Windows XP with SP2.  Repeat the process for SP3…

Part 4:  Creating a bootable CD

The last step is to turn the newly updated files back into a CD-Image. 

This is real easy if your using PowerISO… simply open up the XP-SP1 CD Image and drag-n-drop the c:\XP\*.* files into the root of the image.  Then choose File->Save As    Rename it XP-SP2 and your all done.

Tags: PowerISO, Service Pack, SlipStreaming, Windows, XP