
As noted at the end of the post below, I promised to update if I found a solution. I found a solution:
…nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Last Saturday, I rolled up my sleeves and did just that. It was a bit of a frustration, as I had just done that 3 months ago after a failed go at Wubi. When that had happened, I vowed to find a way to make a “snapshot” of Windows after installing my drivers, so I wouldn’t have to go through the initial hassle of everything again. Just like the road to Hell, I had the best of intentions. They remained intentions, though, so I had to start from scratch.
This time around, though, I did follow through on my intentions. Steps taken, in order:
- Install Windows XP
- Install Service Pack 2
- Install drivers to include: motherboard, monitor, sound card, video card. Any hardware you have that requires a driver. Install them all, as you can, restarting when asked.
- Optional: Updated Windows Media Player to version 11. This was done simply to share my media library with my XBox 360, which is on the same network.
- Continued downloading and installing updates from Windows Update until up-to-date. As of this writing, it can be done in about 7 restarts, and I used those opportunities to install drivers at the same time, minimizing restarts. It would probably have been easier to download the Windows XP SP3 update, but I didn’t realize that was even available until nearly done.
Now, we got to the fun part: Imaging the hard drive. This was a bit involved for me, because of my setup; it can be much easier than what I did depending on your available tools.
- Downloaded and installed CDBurnerXP. The name of the tool is unimportant, just install your CD/DVD burner software. I chose this because (a) my Nero CDs are missing, and (b) CDBurnerXP is free. It’s also quite nice.
- Downloaded and installed DriveImageXML. I went on and ran this immediately, before installing other programs, to keep the size of my imaged drive manageable. It still came out to about 2.5GB, which is not bad at all. Again, the name of the tool is unimportant, and there are several free options out there. I chose this one in particular because (a) it compresses the data it’s imaging, and not all will do that, (b) it’s free, and (c) it actually has integration with…
- Downloaded and installed Bart’s PE. This creates a Windows Preinstalled Environment (PE). DriveImageXML has a plugin that is a part of Barts, meaning you can create a windows CD/DVD with that software installed on it.
- Created a slipstreamed Windows Installation CD with SP2 pre-installed. This was an extra step I had to take because I didn’t have it, and Bart’s PE required it. You can skip it if your copy of Windows has a service pack on it (it will say so on the packaging).
- From there, it was as simple as following the instructions in the video tutorial to create the Windows PE CD. With the program, you can set a directory where the files are stored, and also go ahead and create an ISO file (a single, large file suitable for burning as a CD image). I did NOT create the ISO, nor did I burn a CD at that moment. What I did next was take the files created by DriveImageXML and move them into the “base” directory where Bart’s files were created. F’rinstance, if you put Bart’s files on C:\BartPEfiles, that is where you would put the DriveImageXML files.
- NOW, burn a CD with the files in that directory. Again, everything where the BartPE files were created, and NOT the ISO, should be burned. (You can burn the ISO, but it’ll be redundant.)
If you’re confused by all this, it’s cool. Take a little time and read all the websites I linked here. I can’t support all this, and I’m awful at explaining things, so me helping you would be about as smart as my 2-year-old helping you. You don’t want that. Instead, find a good tech forum or use the support forums for each of the individual softwares. If you break your compy on my advice, you’re not going to get sympathy or anything else from me. You’ve been warned.
Oh, and the next step after imaging: I got a new anti-virus program. I had been using AVG for about 3 years, then ditched it ~18 months ago in favor of Avast! Free. I found out that free = you get what you pay for. I don’t know if it was a virus or just some nasty-ass spyware that we had caught, but in any case, none of my free solutions caught it. After doing some research in Arstechnica’s forums, I pretty much decided to go with NOD32, and bought a 2-year subscription. The program is fast, small, and unobtrusive. It’s also well worth the money I spent. There are less expensive solutions out there, and I have test-driven a few over the last few years, but NOD32 takes the cake insofar as what it protects against. I did not buy an anti-spyware program, as NOD32 seems to be doing OK with finding spyware. I’m still continuing with Ad-Aware and Spybot: Search and Destroy in conjunction with NOD32 to see if we can keep crap like this from happening again.