SuperSite Blog

Perhaps if you don't find a simple way to integrate WMP11 and IE7, you could post a way that is complex? I have a number of friends (and I include myself in that group), who are too lazy to look up how to do it, but are fairly tech-savvy and wouldn't mind given a good guide.

"Perhaps if you don't find a simple way to integrate WMP11 and IE7, you could post a way that is complex?"

it's just not possible with the way that the installers work, unless you want to get into manually inserting files and finding some way of injecting registry settings into the baseline registry....

In Vista, it would be a relatively easy matter, except that IE7 and WMP11 are already included.  

Windows Vista installation media uses imaging technology that is available to the masses (that is, OEM's, System Builders, and IT Pro's, and freely available by Microsoft).  

Install Vista without a product key, hit the Audit key during OOBE (Ctrl-Shift-F3), install your app or whatever other customizations you need, Generalize the installation using SysPrep and set the image to boot back into OOBE mode, and reimage the installation using ImageX or WDS capture by booting into WinPE or Microsoft Deployment before it has a chance to boot back off the hard drive (and back into OOBE mode).  Of course, you can use the OEM Preinstallation Kit (which I do) if you are an OEM or System Builder, or if you just want to deploy the image to multiple computers in a corporate environment, you can use the WAIK (Windows Automated Installation Kit) or the superset planning and application compatibility kit in the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, which has a really nice front-end for the WAIK and helps with planning and testing your deployments.  Enterprise users should be looking at using Microsoft Deployment along with System Center SMS 2003 or SCCM 2007 to further automate the process for hundreds of computers.  Microsoft Deployment Toolkit supports only business client OS versions, but does support Office 2007 Profession and higher, and Server 2003/2008, as well as Windows XP Pro/Tablet.

That said, if you wanted to integrate WMP11 or IE7 into XP, your only option is use an unattended script that installs them automatically.  There are unattended-mode switches for hotfixes and addons for Windows, but you'd have to check what they are for each one, as they like to change them from time to time.

There are also 3rd-party "slipstreamer" programs, but they don't do a proper install, and I wouldn't trust them because they modify files not meant to be modified in the original media.  They are not supported by Microsoft, so what they do can be considered a Windows "hack".

Also, if you want to create an unattended script for Windows XP, there are basically 2 programs you'd want to use, both of which are "Setup Manager".  There's two versions though - one in the OEM Preinstallation Kit for System Builders/OEM's, and the other which is on the Windows XP CD in the file DEPLOY.CAB, which is designed for corporate deployments.  They will create the necessary script to automatically install WMP11 or IE7 towards the end of the normal Windows Setup procedure.

I've used nLite with great success.  And that was even making a Windows 2000 Server CD that I needed to make.

Microsoft just enabled it the other day so it is nothing to do with ImgBurn.  :)