****************************************************************** HOW TO CREATE A WINDOWS XP BOOT CD WITH SP2******************************************************************

Prerequisites:
1. Windows XP Cd
2. Windows Xp SP2 archive
3. CD-RW Drive
4. CD-Writer Software with Boot CD feature
5. A software that can extract Boot image from Bootable CDs
6. Around 1 GB of free space on hard drive. This can be freed once the CD is created.

CREATING THE WIN XP BOOT CD is a 3 step process :

1. First, create a folder on your hard drive e.g: D:\XPCD. Now, copy the entire contents of the existing Windows XP CD to this folder. The Windows XP SP2 executable file is an archive of the Service pack 2 files, so you can use WinZip and extract SP2 files to another folder say D:\SP2.

Now, locate update.exe under D:\SP2. This can be found inside the sub-folder named "update". Go to the DOS command prompt and change your directory to this "update" folder. Run the command "update/integreate:<dir>" where "<dir>" is the directory you saved the Windows XP CD files to, (D:/XPCD) in this case). This will start integrating SP2 into the Windows XP installation files saved at D:\XPCD.

You should get message box confirmation that integration was successful. Now the D:\XPCD folder contains Windows XP installation files with SP2 integrated.

2. Extracting the boot image from the existing Windows XP bootable CD is easy. You need to use software that can do this. Bart's boot Image Extractor (BBIE) is a simple but useful utility availaibe for download at http://www.nu2.nu/bbie/

Insert the Windows XP Cd into the CD drive, and go to the command prompt and change directory to the folder where BBIE is located. Run "bbie -v <CD drive letter>"..for example..."bbie -v F:"
So, now u should find a file named "image1.bin" being created in the same folder from where bbie.exe was run. This file is the Windows XP boot image.

3. Insert a blank CD-R media into your CD Writer. Use burning software as Nero to create your boot CD. Go to File menu and select "New" and select "Boot Cd" and then select the boot image that u created in step 2.

Make sure that the emulation is set to "No Emulation". The boot segment is automatically filled in by Nero--all u need to do is Set the number of loaded sectors to 4.

Select Mode1 and ISO level 2, from under the ISO tab. Enable all options under "Relax ISO Restrictions", and use the ISO 9660 Character Set.

Under the label tab, enter the same label name as that of the original CD. To find this, just insert the Windows XP Installation CD into your CD Drive. Click "New" to open the File Explorer Browser. In the file Browser, select all the XP Installation files with SP2 integrated (i.e from D:\XPCD in the example taken by me) for writing to a new CD.

Finally open the CD Write dialog box, and under the "Burn" tab, enable the Finalize CD option. Now, write the compilation to the blank CD-R.....in my words.......BURN BABY..BURN..LOL....

SO NOW U HAVE SUCCESSFULLY CREATED A BOOTABLE WINDOWS XP INSTALLATION CD WITH SP2..........