Looking for downgraded media

[SSX4life]

Before I begin I just wanted to thank everyone on the MSFN forums who have helped me in the past. Now that I have that out of the way lets get started shall we?

I'm looking for one of two things here and both have eluded me so far. I'm looking for a way to downgrade my windows xp pro oem (SP2) disk to a gold release, or I'm looking for the original .iso from Microsoft that was shipped late in 2005 with the initial launch of the OEM licensing agreement.

You may be scratching your head here and be like "dude why would you want to do that", well let me explain!

Xehqter so kind to release oemscan for windows awhile back and since then I have been creating my own disks for Home / Pro / MCE / Tablet and speeding up the installation process for clients wanting XP reinstalled but not having their restore media, or having HDD failure with a D2D partition (and yes I am keeping apples to apples with their licensing). The downside is that I'm limited by a 700MB cap on all windows installation disks due to wanting to keep everything on CD-R and not migrating over to DVD. Being that I am an oem builder I personally own a copy of Home / Pro / Tablet / MCE so I have access to the media legally (I can't stress that enough). I also have full MSDN access though my college. Unfortunately the MSDN page does not include a gold copy or release of Windows XP Pro OEM, and the oldest release I have is with SP2 slip streamed. My issue is that my current set of disks are SP2 + oembios files slipped into a 700MB cd, and by adding SP3 to the mix I'm over the total size by about 80-90MB give or take.

I'm wanting to downgrade my disk to a gold release (pre SP2 or SP1a) and then slip SP3 into the disk saving me precious space. Does anyone know where or how I can go about doing this? I'm trying to stay legitimate in everything I do, I'm just wanting to save precious time as well.

Suggestions?

-=ssx=-

Edited September 12, 2008 by SSX4life

[SSX4life]

/bump

[clintb]

I don't have an OEM gold disc, but do have a gold VLA, which should be good, less the OEMBIOS files.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/57/

Also you can delete SP1.cab and SP2.cab

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

i would just slim down the extra crap they leave in there. i can trim 193 MB off of a 593 MB

x:\cmpnents

x:\DOTNETFX

x:\DOCS

x:\SUPPORT

x:\VALUEADD

x:\I386\WIN9XMIG

x:\I386\WIN9XUPG

x:\I386\WINNTUPG

most of those are from this article

http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/57/

you can also use nlite to recompress the driver.cab and sp3.cab

heres the size of the ISO i use when i want a 'vanilla' install (not oembios, no driverpacks, no unattend, no functionality removed from final install)

WXP_SP3_LITE.iso

400 MB (419,485,696 bytes)

I have almost 2 GB DVD version that is full unattended, has every driverpack, copies office2007 source to the HD, installs 10-20 misc apps, and has a ton of tweaks that i use frequently but the _LITE version is the one i fall back on when i either dont have a PC with a DVD drive or the driverpacks dont wanna work right.

Edited September 14, 2008 by geek
I see Kel beat me to the linkage

[SSX4life]

I have a gold copy of Pro VLA, is there a way for me to edit that disk for pro oem usage?

I'll look into removing the .cab files you mentioned, but I'd still rather perfer to not have media that has been tampered with or edited.

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

i understand that. I've gotten into a few bad spots with altered installs but as long as you understand what the files are there is little danger for example, if you delete WIN9XMIG, WIN9XUPG and WINNTUPG that gives you 37.6Mb alone. and the only feature you lose is you can no longer upgrade from 9x/NT -but when was the last time you needed that feature? the trick is to remove only the features that youll never need without sacrificing the OSes integrity.

[SSX4life]

There really isn't a down side to keeping the xp install on CD is there? I guess I could finally navigate over to DVD-R and include the full listing of OEMBIOS files eh?

I'm still gonna keep looking for the RTM release of xp pro oem.

--ssx--