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Win XP Installer and SP2 in One 

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

When you install a new OS, you also have to install the latest SPs (service packs) after the OS gets installed. But installing SPs individually is quite cumbersome, especially when the system administrator has to do it on all the machines on a network. This task can be made easier by integrating the SPs and the OS so that both can be installed at one go. We show you how to integrate Win XP with SP2. 

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First, gather your Win XP CD, SP2, IsoBuster (to extract boot image from the CD) and the Nero CD burning software. You need about 750 MB of free space on a drive to work in. Then create an empty folder on this drive, say, D:\XP. Within this folder, create a subfolder called SP2. Now, put the CD in your CD drive and copy all the files from it to the folder created above (D:\XP). Copy Win XP SP2 to the SP2 folder. Now open a command terminal by typing CMD from Start>Run and issue the following commands.

D:\>cd\XP



D:\XP>WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe /integrate:D:\XP

Direct Hit!
Applies to:

System administrators
USP: Use IsoBuster to extract the XP boot image and integrate with SP2
Links:

http://windows-help.net/WindowsXP/winxp-sp2-bootcd.html  
On PCQ Essential CD:

systems\labs\isobuster_all_lang.zip
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This command will launch the Win XP SP2 wizard and integrate the service pack files with the original files. After completing this process, you may safely delete the SP2 folder. 

Now, to extract the boot image from the CD, launch IsoBuster. We have given the shareware version of this tool on this month's PCQ Essential CD. Copy the 'IsoBuster_all_ lang.zip' from the CD to your desktop and unzip. Double click to install it. Now, insert the original Win XP CD again into the drive and run IsoBuster from Start>Programs >Smart Project>IsoBuster. IsoBuster will appear as shown in the screenshot. 

Here, you will see all content of your Win XP installer CD in the IsoBuster explorer. From the left window panel, select 'Bootable CD' to see the boot files on the right window panel ('BootCatalog. cat' and 'Microsoft Corporation.img'). Now, select the 'Microsoft Corporation.img' file, right click on it, and then from the context menu select 'Extract Microsoft Corpration .img'. It will prompt you to save the extracted .img file. Save this file on a location that suits you.

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Open the XP CD using IsoBuster and extract Microsoft Corporation.img file

Finally you need to burn a bootable CD with the content that we created earlier (C:\XP). To do this, run the Nero CD burning software and choose CD-ROM (boot) in the new compilation window. Now click on the Boot tab and select 'Image file' radio button. Here give the location of your boot image file, which we saved above. In the same window enable 'Enable Expert Settings' and set 'Kind of Emulation' to 'No Emulation'. Also set 'Number of Loaded Sectors' to 4 (otherwise the CD will not boot). After this, click on New and from the file browser window select the files and folders from our work folder (D:\XP). Now drag and drop the selected files into ISO1 window and burn your CD. Your Win XP installer with SP2 is ready in a few minutes. 

Sanjay Majumder

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