Finally my last words on XP SP3, (yeah right, you hope so!)
BTW this is being entered into the blog using FireFox 3, I managed to get one of the 24-hr downloads, but sadly not on this machine.
Well we finally figured out the magic cookie for SP3. Assuming that you're an IT/IS guy and you spent a lot of time building slipstream install images for your company's computers, this is how you have to use the SP3 ISO.
1) First test to be sure that your Windows XP Pro image has all the things you want in them and that they worked like you needed them to.
2) I didn't test applying SP3 onto SP1 images. If you believe Microsoft and all that previous drek about only SP2 can be security upgraded, then SP2 HAS to be on the system first.
3) We slip-streamed SP2 onto a volume licensed SP1 install CDROM image of Windows XP Pro. We tested that after installing it to make sure that in general everything made it so far.
4) Take the imaging system and connect it to WIndows UPDATE, using IE6. Yes you have to expose it to the nasty filth on the Internet. When the asp function gets done, it will tell you that to continue you have to upgrade your system to install any updates to the OS. It will attempt to install an Active X object that turns out to be the WGA, the Windows Greatest Aggravation and it will decide whether or not your computer is legit.
5) The other component is the nasty update that they made to the client portion of the Windows Update on your computer that got them (MS) into rancorous trouble with annoying people like me. We wanted to know when somebody in Redmond decided to screw around with our boxes like they owned them!
6) Once they've done their duty and reported "Ain't no pirates here Boss!", disconnect with the Redmond mothership and stick that CD/DVDROM iso in the drive and hit autoplay.inf if that's been turned off by the BOFH. (If you haven't done that, why the hell not? Do you want your Windoze computer to turn into a Zombie?)
7) Click on the install button and go get some coffee and another doughnut if there are any left.
8) Come back and click "Finished". Ce fini!
9) Let it re-boot and Ghost that sucker before somebody can come along and mess it up!
10) Now for the bad news. It totally un-installs IE7 (at least it did on our image). It requires that you do a complete re-install of IE7.
11) It kills a lot of the special settings we had made in HK_Local_Machine.
12) It re-sets the User profiles and causes a lot of re-setting to be made of the user interface (Explorer)
13) It forces new settings to be made of Windows Automatic Update and the Firewall.
All of the major stuff seems to be fine. If something major comes up I'll update but only if I have to.