BOOT CAMP 429 (20/06/06)

Slipstreaming Windows XP, part 2

Following on from last week’s introduction to ‘Slipstreaming’ you should now have a copy of your Windows XP installation disc on your PC, combined with the latest Service Pack 2. In the final part of this short series we will turn that into a bootable CD.

This next step involves extracting a file from your Windows XP disc in order to make the disc ‘bootable’. To do this you will need to download a small utility called ISOBuster. This is a powerful data recovery tool; however, we only need to use one of its many specialised features so you can use the free unregistered version.

Once ISOBuster is installed launch the program, click the ‘Free Funct. Only’ button and open it on the drive containing your Windows XP CD (click Exit to close the XP installation program). Click the ‘Bootable CD icon in the left hand pane and in the right pane right-click on the file called ‘Microsoft Corporation.img’, select ‘Extract Microsoft Corporation.img and it will be copied to your C: drive. That’s all there is to it and you can now exit ISOBuster.

Next, open Windows Explorer and jot down the name of your Windows XP installation disc, mine is called WXPCCD_EN, but yours may be different. We are now ready to create a Slipstreamed CD and the easiest method is to use Roxio Easy Media Creator (V5 or higher) or Nero Burning (V6 or higher); we’ll look at Easy Media Creator first then run through the steps for Nero.

Pop in a blank CD open Media Creator, select Data CD then when the dialogue box opens go to File > New CD Project > Bootable CD. On the dialogue box that opens make sure CD Type is No Emulation, Load Segment is set to 0x7c0 and Sector Count is 4, click the Browse button and locate the Microsoft Corporation.img file you extracted in the previous step. Highlight the file and click OK, the box disappears and you will see two files called BOOTCAT.Bin and BOOTIMG.Bin in the lower window of the CD Project dialogue box.

Next, go to File > CD Project Properties. On the General tab in the Volume Label box enter the name of your Windows XP CD (i.e. WXPCCD_EN). In the File system drop-down menu select ISO9660. None of the items beneath need to be selected and under Physical format of CD select ‘Mode 1: CDROM’. Now select the File System tab, the name of your Windows XP disc should be showing at the top, the boxes below should be blank, ‘Use Original File Data’ and ‘Any MS-DOS 8.3 character file Name’ should both be checked. Finally on the File types tab only Add all files’ should be checked, click OK and the CD Project dialogue box will be displayed.

We’re on the home straight now. In the upper window locate the xp2 folder that you created in part 1. Double-click to display the contents of the folders, highlight all of the files (Ctrl + A) then drag them all into the lower window, to join the two files already there. In some versions of Media Creator you may see an error message concerning ‘naming conventions’, warning you that directory names need to be renamed, click the ‘Change All’ button to allow the changes to be made.

Once all of the files have been copied across click the red Record button. The Record CD Setup dialogue box appears, click ‘Start Recording’ a CD Progress display appears and the burning process begins. Avoid using the PC during whilst the recording is being made.

When it has finished ‘CD Created Successfully message appears in the Disc Progress box, click OK to exit all of the dialogue boxes.

The procedure for Nero is essentially the same. Launch Nero and on the New Compilation Boot window select CD ROM (Boot) from the left hand panel. Select the Boot tab and in the Image File box browse to your Microsoft Corporation.img file. Beneath that select ‘Expert Settings’ No Emulation, and leave the ‘Load segment…’ and ‘Number of Loaded Sectors’ on their default setting of 07CD and 4. On the label tab change Volume Label to the name of your Windows XP CD and check the box ‘… ISO 9660…’. Click the New button and in the File Browser column open your XP2 folder. Highlight the contents in the far right column and drag them into the second column, click the Burn button and the recording process starts.

You can test that your disc works by ejecting and re-loading it; the ‘Welcome to Windows XP’ box should appear on the screen, click Exit to close the window. If for any reason the disc doesn’t work see this week’s top tip for some troubleshooting advice. If you have a spare XP capable PC you could try installing it for real but do not try to activate it since this copy of XP is already running on your main PC. Now all you have to do is label the disc, keep in a safe place and hope that you never need to use it. 

NEXT WEEK - Windows Vista

JARGON FILTER

BOOTABLE CD

Disc containing the files necessary to start a computer and run programs

ISO 9660

File standard for CD ROMs (and DVDs), defined by the International Standards Organisation

NAMING CONVENTIONS

Folder names on an ISO 9660 standard disc can only be up to 8 characters long, including the extension. Longer names have to be shortened or renamed before they can be recorded

TOP TIP

Providing you follow all of the steps carefully the Slipstreaming process should go smoothly but you may run into problems if you leave your CD burning program on its default settings. Double-check that is set to create an ISO 9660 disc, rather than a simple ‘data’ disc. Check also the ‘Sector Count’ or ‘Loaded Sectors’ values are set to 4. Before you start burning your disc exit all other open programs and disconnect from the Internet. Applications running in the background can interrupt the flow of data to the disc and Buffer Under Run or ‘Burn’ errors can be a problem for older CD Writer drives. Nowadays most CD/DVD writers employ ‘Burn-Proof’ technology.

Don’t forget, there’s a full archive of previous Boot Camp Top Tips at www.rickmaybury.com

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© R. Maybury 2006, 1406

Part 1