SQJ Taipei

I can’t seem to post anything lately!

It all started with trying to upgrade our home computer. It has gotten slower and slower and the racket it would make!

So… I bought a mid-level motherboard and CPU (AMD Althon 64×2 3500). I’ve been a fan of non-Intel chips since Cyrix… remember those? Didn’t think so. Anyway… I also grabbed 1GB of RAM (paid less than US$100 for that and I remember paying over US$200 for 4MB back in 1993). I also got a 320GB hard drive to replace my previous configuration of a 120GB a 40GB a 30GB and an 80GB external. It took me several hours to figure out that the newer SATA hard drives are not recognized by Windows XP without the service packs. This was extremely frustrating, but it actually allowed me to learn A LOT about SATA drives and about slipstreaming.

I worked in a computer store and as a sysadmin at CIY before I came to Taiwan and it was really fun to crack open the case of the computer and blow off the dust and troubleshoot these problems. I was really amazed by the slipstreaming process. In slipstreaming, you integrate service patches into the original installation software so you end up with an install package that directly installs the service packs. This is a very cool process and is not just used in Windows but is probably most often used to install Windows XP with service packs 1 and 2.

Here are some links if you find yourself needing to do what I did.

How to slipstream Windows XP with SP2 (Variant 1) - From Paul Thurrotts’s SuperSite for Windows

How to slipstream Windows XP with SP2 (Variant 2) - From HelpWithWindows.com

How to slipstream Windows XP with SP2 (Variant 3) - From TheElderGeek.com

Basically you copy your original install cd to your hard drive… download and unpack the service pack… type in some geeky commands… and then burn the results to a CD and install normally. Very easy and pretty cool. I actually used some other software to set up an automated install where I configured all the things you are usually asked about during the install. This way… the install process was uninterrupted and very fast. It was much more technical than slipstreaming and isn’t necessary and is probably boring so I won’t share it here… but it is available if you should want to use that process too.

The bottom line in my upgrade was that once I got the service packs slipstreamed and set up the unattended install we were up and running and I was busy installing all of our software again and copying over the backups I made.

The kept me from blogging for a while… but the fact is… I’ve got TONS to blog about and each time I try to blog something I end up thinking about which thing to post for too long and my allotted time is gone…..

I’ll get going again today and tomorrow. I’ll probably have something new just about every day for the next 7-10 days so please come back often.