How to make a Windows XP Pro boot CD with all the nForce2 drivers!
this process will create an XP boot cd that won't require you to install SATA or nForce drivers, as they'll all be present upon the completion of setup. i made this because i hate floppy drives (die floppy DIE!), and i was getting sick of having to connect a floppy drive just to get my SATA RAID disks recognized during setup. one thing lead to another and i wound up creating a boot cd that handled all my drivers to save myself the headache.
this has borrowed heavily from various sources on the net. most of the pertinent sites are linked herein.
1) copy all the files from your XP cd to a temporary folder (let's call it C:\XPSource)
2) slipstream SP1 if you haven't already:
http://www.tacktech.com/d...ect...icle.cfm&id=160 3) copy your now slipstreamed cd files into a folder (say, C:\XPCD)
4) download the newest drivers for your motherboard. i've got an asus a7n8x deluxe, so i'm using the 2.16 drivers. their site doesn't seem to be responding to me at the moment, but the file was named "nf2v116_wxp.zip". also grab the 3com drivers, and whatever other drivers you might need as well (say, video card or whatever else)
5) make a directory under C:\XPCD named $OEM$
6) make a directory under that called $1
7) make yet another directory under that called Drivers. you should now have something like C:\XPCD\$OEM$\$1\Drivers
extract your drivers to subdirectories of C:\XPCD\$OEM$\$1\Drivers. the asus drivers all come in separate directories (XP\MemCtl, XP\Ethernet, etc). make note of the subdirectories you've created, as we'll have to provide a list of these directories to XP setup later. update: these files and folder names MUST have 8.3 compatiable names. this means that none of the files or folders can have names longer than 8 characters. it won't work if they do! (thanks lanakaian!)
9) download the newest SATA RAID drivers from SI. as of this post, you can get them here.
10) extract the "Si3112r.sys" file into the i386 folder (C:\XPCD\i386\Si3112r.sys)
11) extract the whole SATA driver archive (all the files) to a directory under Drivers, say C:\XPCD\$OEM$\$1\Drivers\SATA.
12) find the TXTSETUP.SIF file in the i386 folder (C:\XPCD\i386\TXTSETUP.SIF) and open it in NOTEPAD.
13) add the following line under [SourceDisksFiles]
si3112r.sys = 1,,,,,,_x,4,1
14) add the following line under [HardwareIdsDatabase]
PCI\VEN_1095&DEV_3112&SUBSYS_61121095 = "Si3112r"
15) add the following line under [SCSI.Load]
si3112r = si3112r.sys,4
16) add the following line under [SCSI]
si3112r = "Silicon Image SiI 3112 SATARaid Controller"
17) save your changes to TXTSETUP.SIF - we're done with this file. this file is for the text-based portion of the install (before we get XP's GUI). it keeps us from having to insert a floppy and pressing F6 during setup.
18) now we need to handle the GUI portion of the setup. create a text file under C:\XPCD\i386 called "WINNT.SIF". this is a file that XP setup will look for to automate the GUI portion of the setup. this is called an "unattended installation", and is used to answer some of the questions XP asks during the installation (and even some questions it doesn't ask). this file is called an "answer file". for more on setting up a custom unattended install, look here:
http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=202 19) open C:\XPCD\i386\WINNT.SIF in notepad, and insert the following lines:
[Data]
AutoPartition=0
MsDosInitiated="0"
UnattendedInstall="Yes"
[Unattended]
UnattendMode=ProvideDefault
OemPreinstall=Yes
OemSkipEula=Yes
NoWaitAfterTextMode=1
NoWaitAfterGUIMode=1
TargetPath=\WINDOWS
DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
OemPnPDriversPath=Drivers\ATI;Drivers\nForce\3Com;Drivers\nForce\AudioDrv;
Drivers\nForce\AudioUtl;Drivers\nForce\Ethernet;Drivers\nForce\GART;
Drivers\nForce\MemCtl;Drivers\nForce\nvIDE;Drivers\nForce\IDE;
Drivers\SATA;Drivers\nForce\SMBus
[GuiUnattended]
OEMSkipWelcome = 1
[UserData]
ProductKey=xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
FullName=""
OrgName=""
20) here's the important bit: look at the OemPnPDriversPath entry.
PUT IT ALL ON THE SAME LONG LINE!!! not on 4 lines like above - i only put it on 4 lines because the forum will then stretch the page wide enough to fit it and you'll wind up scrolling left and right for the whole damn document.
this line will tell XP setup where to look for the .INF files for each of your devices. it will look in these paths first before checking it's own database of device drivers. the paths given are relative to the $OEM$\$1 folder you created. that is, "Drivers\ATI" tells it to look for a .INF file under C:\XPCD\$OEM$\$1\Drivers\ATI. change this line to point to the paths for all the device drivers that you've downloaded, seperated by ";"
21) change the product key to match your key and you won't have to enter it during installation. otherwise, you can just remove that line
22) again, check out how to do a custom unattended installation from the link above if you want more settings changed - you can setup a lot of things that you normally do manually after the installation in this answer file. save the C:\XPCD\i386\WINNT.SIF answer file and close notepad.
23) burn it to a bootable CD by following the guide here:
http://www.tacktech.com/d...ect...icle.cfm&id=160
