I've been working with nLite for awhile now. Everything seems to work fine (except for a few reg tweaks but I've worked around that). The other day, I noticed that there is no I386 folder on the HD after installation. Is that normal? I don't think I've seen a system that didn't have an I386 folder on C:. Like I said, everything appears to work, so I guess this isn't a problem. It's just unexpected.

Am I doing anything wrong? Does it matter that it's missing?

For the record: XP Home, SP2

Ray

I have never seen an installation with an i386 folder on C, and I've probably installed windows (everything from nt up to vista) at least 50 times.

optionsNope you only get the i386 folder copied by using advanced options.

Interesting. I know that both of the Dells on my home network here and the Lenovo Thinkpad I use for work all have C:\I386 folders. And I know I've seen it elsewhere because I always thought it was a strange folder name presumably dating to 80386 processors. But maybe not. On this computer, there are 8,827 objects taking up 805 MB of space. Nothing has a modified date later than about the time I bought the computer in 2002. The other Dell has about half as many files. Now that I look at it closer, it appears that there are a lot of compressed files along with their decompressed counterparts (i.e., ATTRIB.EX_ and ATTRIB.EXE). Some looked like they might be important (like application files, cursors, security files, .INFs). I just did a search for a few of the files and they don't exist anywhere but in the I386 folder on this machine.

I see other threads asking about how to copy the I386 folder but nothing that says why you would want to. What's the advantage of having the folder on the C: drive? Obviously it's not an absolute requirement, but am I going to later regret not having it after I reinstall Windows?

@Kelsenellenelvian:

If you are referring to the Options page in nLite, there aren't a lot of choices there. 17 on the General tab and four on the Patches tab. None directly reference "I386" and I've not changed any of them. I take it that one or a combination of several of those options would get a copy of I386 moved to the hard drive.

If the files aren't important, I won't worry about that folder. It just looked odd that it didn't exist when it does, perhaps unnecessarily, on all three other machines I currently use.

Thanks for the responses.

Ray

For the record, to copy the \I386 directory from CD to the hard disk is a common practice between techs, since NT 4.0 days, it allows for two rather distinctive advantages:
1) installing from hard disk is faster (due to the inherently faster access rate of the HD when compared to CD)
2) should some more files be needed at a later stage, they are all already on the hard disk, so the user (EXPECIALLY of laptop PC's) will not be prompted to "Insert the Windows installation CD" when some driver of other file are found missing.

I guess that most OEM installed systems use this method as it greatly simplify remote assistance.

With the release of the various Service Packs and Windows Update, the 2nd part of the advantage has of course lost much of it's appeal, unless one makes periodically a slipstreamed-with-all-updates new source and copies it on the hard disk \I386 directory.

WHY some means to automatically update or "slipstream" BOTH source installation files and actually installed files it has not being provided still remain one of the biggest Microsoft "misteries".

As anyone trying to repair a system that has been updated by means of an "original" not-slipstreamed CD has experienced, it is nearly impossible, your best bet is to have another computer either online and with a fast connection or an archive with the various OS and SP's and burn on-the-spot a CD with the corresponding level of update as the system under repair.

jaclaz

P.S.: and yes the name comes from the old NT (cannot say if 3.1 or 3.51) CD where there was a \I386 directory for "Intel" based machines and one for "Alpha" ones, and of course the 386 was the first Intel processor to be able to run (maybe the verb "walk" would be more appropriate) the NT code, 32 bit, more properly defined as "IA-32" or "x86-32" family of processors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IA-32
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80386

jaclaz,

Thanks for explaining that. I think that since I'm building my unattended CD on my D: drive, I'll always have access to the files without making another copy of them on C:. At least I now know that it's okay to not have an I386 folder included in the new installation.

Ray