Slipstreamed and Unattended Windows Installations - Third Party Apps to the Rescue
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First and foremost, clearly the most state-of-art slipstreaming and deployment tool for unattended Windows installations is the so-called nLite. It is the most up-to-date freeware application in this area. The developer, Dino Nuhagic, nicknamed Nihu, is truly responsive to the need for bug-fixing and adding new support.
nLite is specifically designed for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 2003. There is a dedicated edition just for Vista, called vLite. But during this article our emphasis lies on nLite. We all know that Vista has not achieved the success of its predecessors. The application is freeware and allows a high level of customization.
The user is able to remove components that are technically "un-removable" under normal conditions; herein we include Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Movie Maker, and so forth. This grants the user permission to totally eliminate any traces of bloat-ware. For older machines this may improve performance, but regardless, it gives the user absolute control over his or her operating system, which is a definite plus.
The next amazing feature, which is the main reason we are talking about nLite, is its slipstreaming image creation specifically for unattended deployment. Moreover, advanced service configuration is also possible (a la services.msc) before slipstreaming!
Probably the most user-friendly function is its .ISO image creation (as export) feature. Usually, the most common frustrations concern the images, whether they don't boot anymore or the setup process simply halts, gives errors, or whatnot. So a good image creation process is especially important because it basically guarantees a working installation CD and there's nothing the user can do wrong (like forgetting to specify the 4 boot blocks).
Once the image is generated, all that is left to do is burn it on an optical media. Slipstreaming also solves the problems regarding those SATA hard drives and/or RAID arrays that require additional drivers, otherwise Windows won't recognize them. These can be slipstreamed and then right away everything will go smoothly.
As an extension to its list of features, there are numerous extra tweaks that come with its high level of user customization: themes, skins, wallpapers, desktop-related tweaks; other tweaks for managing the start-menu, all-around security, network, explorer, taskbar, and so forth. And finally, even the CD-key can be specified to speed things up.
We wholeheartedly suggest thoroughly reading the user guide that can be found on the official website. It's also a good idea to read the FAQ, and the numerous step-by-step walk-throughs available in various places on the Web. And, of course, the nLite Forums are a really active place where you can ask for clarification.
Nevertheless, nLite isn't the only utility handling Windows customization which does slipstreaming and unattended installations. Another alternative is TommyP's HFSLIP utility. It works along the same lines as nLite. For a detailed overview of its features and user manuals, just check out the website linked earlier.
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