With Windows NT if you set up a distribution/installation
point on a server to install Windows NT from, there was no way to
integrate Windows NT Service Packs into the distribution point.
This meant you still had to install the Service Pack(s) after
you installed Windows NT.
With Windows 2000, you can now integrate, or Slipstream,
Service Packs into your Windows 2000
distribution point. You can now have a distribution point
with Windows 2000 and the latest Service
Pack all in one. Note: These instructions also apply
to Windows XP.
1. Go to the Windows
2000 Service Packs site and download the latest Service pack
for Windows 2000.
Go to the Windows
XP Service Pack site for XP.
2. On your server (or a Win2000 Pro PC) create a directory,
say c:\win2ksp, and put the downloaded Service Pack file
into it. Since this is a compressed executable file, you will
need to uncompress it or expand it.
Open a command prompt window, change to c:\win2ksp and type:
win2ksp3.exe /x c:\win2ksp
The above command is using the file name for Service Pack 3 - this
will be different depending on the Service Pack. The /x switch
tells the Win2ksp3.exe file to expand it's contents without installing
the Service Pack.
Once you run this command, the Service Pack files will be expanded
to the c:\win2ksp directory.
You will end up with c:\win2ksp with an i386 subdirectory.
The i386 subdirectory has the Service Pack files in it.
Note: Make sure you have enough space for all the files.
For SP3, the downloadable file is about 127MB in size. Once
you expand the file, you will use up about 270MB of hard
drive space. Make sure you have enough room to do this.
3. Next, get your Windows 2000 CD, put it in your server
and copy the entire contents to another directory on your server.
For this example we will use c:\win2kpro. This directory
will be your Distribution/Installation Point. It is
this directory, with the Windows 2000 Pro files, that will be updated
with the Service Pack files.
Note: If you don't want to copy the entire contents of the
CD to your server, just copy the i386 directory and the CDROM_XX.5
files. The CDROM_XX.5 files are Identifier files necessary
for the slipstreaming.
Make sure the CDROM_XX.5 files go in the root of your distribution
point, c:\win2kpro, not in
c:\win2kpro\i386.
WinXP Pro users : For Windows XP Pro, the Identifier files
are named Win51IP and Win51.
4. We now have a c:\win2kpro and a c:\win2ksp directory
on our server (once again, you can do this on a Win2kPro PC if you
want). To slipstream the Service Pack into the Windows 2000
distribution point, open a command prompt window, change to the
c:\win2ksp directory and type the following:
cd i386\update <enter>
update.exe -s:c:\win2kpro <enter>
The first line changes the directory to the c:\win2ksp\i386\update
directory. In this directory is a file called update.exe.
Update.exe is the file that kicks off the installation of
the Service Pack.
The second line tells update.exe not to install the Service Pack,
but instead slipstream or integrate the Service Pack files into
the directory indicated... c:\win2kpro. The slipstream command
needs to be entered exactly as shown. No extra spaces and
make sure you put the colon after the -s switch.
Note: If your path has a space in it, you need to put the
path in quotes, like this:
update.exe -s:"c:\windows 2000\win2kpro"
Once update.exe finishes (it only takes a couple of minutes at most),
you will have a directory with the Windows 2000 Pro files and the
latest Service Pack integrated into Windows 2000 Pro.
Note: You can do the same thing with Windows 2000 Server
and Windows XP.
When subsequent Service Packs are released, you can just run update.exe
into the same distribution point, and you will then have Windows
2000 Pro with the latest Service Pack.
Notes about Integrated Installs
You cannot
upgrade a Windows Operating System using an integrated install
of Win2000 with a slipstreamed service pack. It is only for
clean installs.
You cannot
remove the service pack that is slipstreamed into a Win2000
integrated install.
Creating a CD
Now that you have a directory with Windows 2000 Pro and the latest
service pack integrated into it, you can easily create a CD that
has Windows 2000 Pro with SP3 (or whatever Service Pack is integrated).
Fire up your favorite CD creating software and use your Distribution
Point directory as the source files for the CD. If you
use Easy CD Creator, you can get instructions here
.
|