If you’ve recently purchased a new laptop, chances are that it came with Windows Vista installed on it. Now, depending on how easily you can adapt, that might be a little bit of a problem. Even though Vista has been out for about a year now, many users are still reporting on having a hard time with the new operating system. Some consumers just can’t get all of their peripherals to work properly, others are experiencing horrendous performance issues, while still others just hate the changes that Microsoft made.

One solution to this dilemma would be to take Apple’s advice and just “upgrade” back to XP. If you’ve already gone ahead and tried this approach, though, you may have noticed that this causes another problem — quite a serious one actually. XP refuses to install!

So what’s the problem, you ask? Well, let’s think about this chronologically, shall we. Windows XP is old. No wait, let me rephrase that: XP is ancient! This means that the software and the drivers included with the installation package are just as old; that’s six years to be precise. Back in 2001, when XP debuted, Microsoft expected motherboards to interface with hard drives via an IDE cable. But, six years down the road, PCs and laptops manufacturers have all dumped IDE in favor of SATA, which is faster, allows for hot swapping of drives, and insures better data integrity and reliability. This all sounds wonderful, until you consider that Microsoft never included any SATA drivers with their XP installers. So now what?

Fortunately, there is a fairly easy way to rectify this problem. The necessary SATA drivers aren’t included with the standard installation disc, so we’ll have to add, or slipstream, them using a neat little tool called nLite:

• First off, we’ll need to download and install nLite, a freeware application developed and hosted by Dino Nuhagic. The latest version can be found at www.nliteos.com. I got everything up and running with version 1.4.

• Next, we’ll need to locate and download the appropriate SATA driver. Since it took me quite a bit of time and effort to locate the necessary drivers, I’ll do my part to simplify the task by hosting the driver I used here.

• The only other thing that we need now is an XP installation disc – hopefully a legal copy – into which we’ll slipstream the SATA driver.

Okay, now that we have the right software and the correct driver, let’s get started. Since we’re going to be adding a component to the standard Windows installation files, we’ll have to extract the files from the CD. While doing so, it is important to make sure that the file structure stays intact. By far the easiest way of getting all the right files onto your system is to simply insert the CD, head over to My Computer, right click the CD directory, hit copy, and then paste it to the desktop. Once that is done you’ll be ready to get started with nLite:

• Once nLite is launched, go ahead and skip the first screen which only contains information about the program.

• The second screen will ask you to locate the Windows installation, which will be on the desktop if you followed the instructions above verbatim. Once you’ve located the correct directory, hit OK in the selection window and wait for nLite to analyze the directory. If you’ve identified the correct directory, you should be able to see the Windows version, what service pack you have, the version number and installer size. If you don’t see this information, chances are that you’ve identified the wrong directory.

• The third page isn’t really that important, so skip it and make sure you get to the Task Selection page, since that’s the part where paying attention becomes important; it’ll be where you tell nLite what to do with the Windows installation files. Depending on what version of the Windows XP installation disc you have, you might want to alter a few of the settings. However, for the purposes of this article, I’m going to assume that we’re dealing with a standard Microsoft installation disc that already has Service Pack 2 installed on it, and that we’re not interested in slipsteaming in any other components, hotfixes, addons or tweaks. So, with all these considerations in mind, go ahead and check the third box down, labeled “Drivers,” as well as the very last one, labeled “Bootable ISO.” Click next when done.

• We should now be at the Drivers page; this is where you should locate the correct driver for nLite to slip into the installation. In the bottom right hand side of the window, right above “Next,” you should see a button labeled “Insert.” Click it, and then select “Multiple Driver Folder.” Doing so should bring up yet another window within which you’ll have to locate the folder that the SATA driver, which you should have downloaded earlier, resides in. Clicking OK in this, as well as in the next window, should bring up a list of possible SATA drivers. Now, if you know exactly what hardware you have, go ahead and select the appropriate driver. However, if you don’t know exactly what you need, then you might want to try the fourth one from the bottom — that’s the one that worked for my HP DV6500T. Clicking OK again should kick you back to the Drivers page; go ahead and click next.

• This next page is really straightforward. If you feel that you’ve set everything up correctly, hit OK, and watch nLite got to work — okay, well maybe there isn’t that much to see…

• After nLite finishes working its magic proceed to the next page, where you’ll have to complete one last task. Now that nLite has analyzed and modified your XP installation files, it’s going to want to know what it’s supposed to do with the newly created files. Your two best options are either to burn a new XP installation disc directly from within nLite, or to have the program create an ISO image which you can then do with as you please. In my case, I went ahead and created an image (just in case I happen to loose the CD at some point), which I then burned to a disc with Alcohol 120% (there are plenty of other applications, such as Nero, that will do the exact same thing).

If you successfully followed the steps outlined above, then you should now have a brand new installation disc for Windows XP. The only remaining step is to insert the disc in your laptop and reboot. If everything went to plan, your machine will recognize the drive and start the installation process, which should be the exact same as it would otherwise be. If you have any remaining questions, please feel free to post a comment down below, and I’ll try my best to assist.

Note: This slipsteaming process will only work if you want to install Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003.

Series: Dual-Booting: XP and Ubuntu

Part I | Part II | Part III