Okay, so we all know that people have been slipstreaming service packs into Windows setup discs ever since Windows 2000. But I wanted to do this with Vista, and I wanted to include Service Pack 2 and other Windows updates.

A quick Google search for slipstreaming Vista will bring up vLite. It is a handy app, and makes slipstreaming SP1 easy. It also allows removal of some things, which I found out is a bad idea because it will cause problems installing other service packs later. It also allows you to make some other tweaks, like disabling UAC and modifying services, and creates an unattended setup for you as well if you want. The main problem I ran into with vLite is its inability to slipstream SP2 into the install.

So I looked some more, and found this article on slipstreaming SP2. Basically what you do is install Vista on a clean partition (or in my case on a virtual machine), avoid setting up any actual user accounts, install the service packs, and capture the drive back to the install image on your new setup disc.

After I did this, I also realized that you can install all the rest of the available Windows updates into the image. Then I thought about it and figured that it should be possible to install other apps too (you know, like Firefox, Adobe Reader, 7-Zip, Flash Player, GIMP, etc.) so you don’t have to install them later. I tried it, and it worked flawlessly. It does take pretty much all day though, so before doing it you’d have to determine whether or not it’s worth it for you.

Here’s what you need:

1. A Vista install disc. 32-bit and 64-bit are not interchangeable, so you have to use whichever you want slipstreamed.
2. A host machine with the capability to run whichever version of Vista you’re slipstreaming, preferably with that version of Vista already installed on it.
3. A clean virtual machine with that capability as well, or a clean partition to install a fresh copy of Vista on. I will be assuming you’re using a virtual machine, because it makes the process easier.
   • If you use a virtual machine, you’ll need a way to mount a virtual drive as a local drive. If you use VMware, you can use vmware-mount for this purpose. You’ll also probably want to add the install path for this to your path statement to make it easier to run it later.
4. The Windows Automated Installation Kit installed on your computer. The download for this is a .img file (same thing as .iso), which you will have to either burn to a DVD or mount to a virtual drive, then run the installer. You can probably extract the contents to a directory using 7-Zip or the like and run it from there instead, but I haven’t tried it that way. The installation for this requires a reboot, so it’s probably best if you install this before starting the slipstreaming process.
5. vLite. You don’t absolutely need it, but it makes it much easier to create a new ISO image (or burn directly to DVD if you want). It also puts together the unattended setup for you, as well as the other things I mentioned earlier. If you don’t use vLite, you’ll have to use something like UltraISO to replace the install.wim file in the original ISO. Trust me, it’s just easier to use vLite.
6. Standalone installer for Service Pack 1. Get 32-bit version here, or 64-bit version here.
7. Standalone installer for Service Pack 2. Get 32-bit version here, or 64-bit version here.
8. Installers for all the other apps you want slipstreamed in.
9. Time and patience.

Here’s what you do:

1. Install WAIK if you haven’t done so already.
2. Install vLite if you haven’t done so already.
3. If you don’t have the Service Pack installers yet, you should start downloading them now and continue the process while they are downloading.
4. Dump the contents of your Vista disc to a directory somewhere on your hard drive.
5. Prepare your virtual machine. A 10GB virtual drive should be plenty of space, and 1GB RAM should be sufficient. Also be sure to set up networking (bridged mode works the best). You should set the optical drive to the physical drive where your Vista DVD is (or set it to use a Vista DVD ISO if you have one).
6. Install a clean copy of Vista on your virtual machine. During the process, do not enter a product key. The installer will whine at you about it, but ignore it. Also, you’ll want to create a partition on the virtual drive instead of just using the whole thing, otherwise you’ll probably have issues accessing it externally later.
7. When installation is complete, the Windows Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE) will show up. It is a window titled “Set Up Windows” and it will show up either asking you about your locale, or asking you to set up a new user account. Don’t click anything.
8. Press Ctrl+Shift+F3. The machine will reboot into audit mode and you’ll be logged into the Administrator account. A window titled “System Preparation Tool” will show up. Leave it alone for now.
9. Install Service Pack 1 using the installer you downloaded earlier. Make sure to let it reboot however many times it wants to. You’ll have to get the installer through a folder that is shared between your host machine and your virtual machine. I got to mine through my networked admin share. To do that, open up explorer on the virtual machine and type in “\\hostname\c$” replacing “hostname” with the actual hostname or IP address of your host computer. You’ll also have to enter in your credentials, and then navigate to wherever you downloaded the files. You’ll also obviously need to have file sharing enabled on your computer. There are other ways to get the files to your virtual machine, but that’s beyond the scope of this tutorial. Honestly, if you can’t figure it out, you probably shouldn’t be doing this anyway.
10. Run the SP1 cleanup tool to get rid of the backups of files that were replaced by SP1. To do this, open the Run dialog (hit WinLogo+R), type “vsp1cln” and hit OK. When prompted, hit Y. Wait for the process to complete. It only takes about a minute, and the window will most likely disappear when it’s done. At this point, you might want to reboot once again for good measure (using the Start Menu, not the sysprep dialog).
11. Install Service Pack 2 via the same process as Service Pack 1.
12. Run the SP2 cleanup tool the same way you did with SP1, except with the command “compcln” instead of “vsp1cln”. Again, wait for it to complete and reboot for good measure.
13. If you’re going to do multiple installation configurations, this would be a good place to create a snapshot to revert to later.
14. At this point, it’s up to you whether or not you want to install anything else. I would recommend at least getting all the available important and recommended Windows updates. It will take a long time, but it will save that much time later each time you install Vista on another machine. Be sure to reboot and check for more updates afterward, because all the updates don’t usually show up the first time. I would also strongly recommend avoiding installing any drivers or hardware-dependent software, as the hardware configuration will be different on other machines. At this time, you can also do whatever registry tweaks you want. Just remember that any user-specific things you do will only apply to the Administrator account, which you will most likely never use again.
15. When you’re done installing things, reboot one more time just to make sure everything is kosher. Empty the Recycle Bin and delete as many temp files as you can. Most of them will be in C:\Windows\Temp and C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp. If you used a browser within the virtual machine, you’ll probably want to clean up your history and everything as well.
16. This might also be a good place to take a snapshot.
17. In the sysprep dialog, select “Enter System Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE)”, check the “Generalize” box, and select “Shut Down”. Hit OK. Booting back into the virtual machine at this point may or may not screw things up, so I’d recommend not trying. Of course, if you saved a snapshot earlier, you can always go back to that. If you need to, you can probably get back into audit mode using Ctrl+Shift+F3 again at the OOBE dialog, but do this at your own risk.
18. Open up a WAIK command prompt. Default location is Start->All Programs->Microsoft Windows AIK->Windows PE Tools Command Prompt. If you have UAC enabled, you’ll probably have to right-click it and run as administrator.
19. At this point, you’ll have to mount your virtual drive to a drive letter. If you used VMware, the command is:
    vmware-mount V: "\path\to\image.vmdk"
    Where V is whatever drive letter you want to mount to, and the path is the actual path to your disk image. If it doesn’t give an error, continue to the next step. If it gives you an unexpected error, chances are the partition is larger than the drive. This is what happens when you have the Vista installer use the whole drive. You can check to see if this is the problem by looking in Event Viewer. If this is the problem, it can be fixed using the following command from the directory where VMware is installed:
    vmware-vdiskmanager -x 10.01GB "\path\to\image.vmdk"
    Where 10.01GB is a size slightly larger than the existing image. This command takes forever, but it works to fix the problem. After it’s done, try mounting the image again.
20. With your drive mounted, run the following command to create a new image for the Vista installer:
    imagex /compress maximum /flags "ULTIMATE" /capture V: "\path\to\new\image.wim" "Windows Vista ULTIMATE" "Windows Vista Ultimate"
    In the /flags argument, replace “ULTIMATE” with whatever version you’re slipstreaming, all caps, no spaces (i.e. “HOMEPREMIUM”). V: is obviously the drive where the disk image is mounted, and the path is the location of where you want the new image to be placed. The last two arguments are the name and description of the image. What I have listed are the original name and description for Ultimate, but you can safely put anything you want there. If you’re adding an additional image to the same file (which is what you need to do in order to get multiple installation options), use “/append” instead of “/capture”. If you need to change the version flag, name, or description, you can use the following command (Home Premium used as example, and 1 being the number of the image being modified):
    imagex /flags "HOMEPREMIUM" /info "\path\to\image.wim" 1 "Windows Vista HOMEPREMIUM" "Windows Vista Home Premium"
    You can just use the command “imagex” by itself for more help on other things you can do with it.
21. The capture command takes forever, so go watch the latest episode of Two and a Half Men while you wait.
22. When you’ve added all the configurations you want, go to where you dumped your Vista disc contents and replace sources\install.wim with the new .wim file you just created.
23. Run vLite and select the location where you dumped your Vista disc. If you have multiple configurations in your .wim file, you can only do modifications to one configuration at a time, so you’ll have to pick which one you want to tweak, etc. It will take a few seconds to load up the configuration, but when it’s done it should list the name and description you set earlier, and it should also show Service Pack 2 on the Version line. Hit Next.
24. If you have other drivers or packages you want added, check the Integration box. This most likely isn’t necessary, especially if you already did all the Windows updates. I would strongly recommend unchecking the Components box, because removing components will cripple the ability to install any service packs later (and possibly some other updates). Tweaks and Unattended Setup are optional, but can come in handy if you want to customize a little further. I don’t know any reason why you wouldn’t want to make an ISO, so you’ll probably want to check that box (when you get to that point, it will let you burn right to a DVD instead if you want).
25. Step through the rest of the wizard. It is pretty self-explanatory. When you’re done, you’ll have a slipstreamed Vista setup disc!

And here’s what you get immediately after a fresh install:

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