Slipstreaming Windows XP SP3 in Linux

Unfortunately Windows is still a necessary evil sometimes: I keep a Windows virtual machine [11] for times when it's absolutely necessary, and I still give my friends Windows tech support. I still like to do things properly, and so I wanted to create a Windows XP [12] install CD with Service Pack 3 [13] slipstreamed [14] in¹. I had two CDs to do, and slipstreamed the first one using a Windows VM, but then got curious and wondered if I could do it without Windows.

The answer is that it is possible using Wine [15] to run the service pack installer. I followed this blog post [16] (which was interesting since it's in French), but I then found another blog post [17] which explains it in English. The steps are as follows:

1. Copy contents of original CD to harddrive.
2. Extract the service pack using cabextract.

3. Use Wine to run the service pack installer.

   wine ~/sp3/i386/update/update.exe /integrate:~/xp/
   

4. Use geteltorito [18] to extract the bootloader from the original CD

5. Make sure that all the filenames are upper case.

   convmv -r --upper --notest ~/xp/*
   

6. Create the new CD image. I did this in K3b [19] with the following settings.

   • Boot emulation: none
   • Boot load segment: 0x7c0
   • Boot load size: 0x4
   • Generate Joilet extensions
   • Omit version numbers in ISO9660 filenames (nothing else enabled under "ISO9660 Settings"
   • ISO Level 1
7. Test in a virtual machine

It seems to be quite particular about the ISO9660 settings and the upper case filenames, so if it doesn't boot check the settings.