1 - Intro

It’s been a while since anyone’s had to slipstream a Windows XP service pack, but seeing as how SP3 is now available, we thought we’d do a refresher course.

To create your own bootable Windows XP SP3 CD, you’ll need the following:

• A bootable Windows XP CD (any service pack level, Home or Professional)
• Windows XP SP3
  
• Bart’s Boot Image Extractor (BBIE)
• Nero Burning ROM (downloadable demo available)
  

You don’t have to use BBIE or Nero if you don’t want to, but this tutorial uses them. All you really need is an application which can extract the boot image from your current Windows XP CD, and a CD burning application which can utilise the boot image to create a new bootable CD. Choice of applications isn’t critical.

2 - Preparing the Data

You need to create a folder structure to hold all the necessary files on your PC locally before you burn them to CD.

I used a secondary hard drive (D:) and created two subfolders: XPSP2CD and XPSP3 (my XP CD already has SP2 slipstreamed), so I’ll use those names throughout the tutorial.

Copy the entire contents of the XP CD to D:\XPSP2CD, but first make sure that hidden files and folders are visible and that protection of system files is turned off via Windows Explorer.

To check this, go to Tools/Folder Options/View, check the radio button for “Show hidden files and folders” and make sure the checkbox next to “Hide protected operating system files” is unchecked.

Next, copy the SP3 standalone file (windowsxp-kb936929-sp3-x86-enu.exe) to D:\XPSP3. To extract the contents of the file you can use a file archiver like WinRar, but more simply just go Start/Run and type in:

D:\XPSP3\windowsxp-kb936929-sp3-x86-enu.exe –x

Extract the service pack

This launches an extraction dialogue box. Extract the files to D:\XPSP3, and once that’s done you can delete the original SP3 file as it won’t be needed any more.

Place the extracted SP3 files


3 - Extract the Boot Image

Download BBIE and extract the files to a local folder (in my case, D:\BBIE). Then, open a Command Windows, navigate to D:\BBIE and run the following command:

bbie x:
(Where x: is the optical drive with the XP CD.)

BBIE will search the CD for any available boot images, and extract them using an image1.bin, image2.bin, etc naming convention. There should only be one boot image on the XP CD. BBIE also can extract boot images from ISOs – just change the command to:

bbie x:\cdimage.iso
(Where x: is the folder containing the ISO, and cdimage.iso is the filename.)

The image1.bin will be stored in the active folder (D:\BBIE).

4 - Slipstream the Service Pack

To integrate the service pack, go Start/Run and enter the following command:

D:\XPSP3\i386\update\update.exe /integrate:D:\XPSP2CD

Slipstream the SP3 files

Note that there’s no space between /integrate: and D:\XPSP2CD. The upgrade program will launch and install the service pack into the locally cached CD, and confirm once it’s done.

Successfully slipstreamed!