In message , John
Rumm writes

I too have no master disc. Had one been supplied with the m/c it would
not have service pack 2 or 3.

The solution to that is to make a "slipstreamed"[1] disc which rolls
up all the updates onto an install image. Saves hours of patching
should you ever need to do a fresh install. (which I had to do for the
second time in about 11 years on one of my machines recently... pah,
all these people who can't keep it up for more than a few weeks at a
time eh ;-)


[1] nlite is a very handy package for this - point it at a folder with
the install CD content in it, and another with the required service
packs etc and it will create the new slipstreamed CD for you in one hit.

I have Nero. But what is meant by *slipstreamed*

Nero is ok for burning images - but nlite does that and lots more...

Slipstreaming is basically taking a patch or service pack and
integrating it into an install CD = so when you install from it, you
get a ready patched system from the off. Quicker and easier, and also
save a fair bit of disk space.

Say your PC came with WinXP SP1 on CD, rather than reinstall from that
- hence reverting the machine to SP1 and then needing to go through
applying all the patches again to get back to SP3. You can download the
SP3 service pack as a standalone exe from the MS site, and then have it
apply itself to a copy of your original CD - thus making a slipstreamed
SP3 disk. Which you can then use that to reinstall.

The same trick can be used on most MS installation media (not just
operating systems) and with most of the patch and update files)

I suspect this is likely to stretch my ability:-(

As I thought... technical.

A quick tot up of service packs, security updates and quick fixes is
around 850Mb. I suppose that is not necessarily cumulative but a bit
much for 700Mb discs.

I'll run this by a younger brain when the opportunity occurs.

regards

--
Tim Lamb