Okay, this might be old stuff.

How to create a custom Windows OS Installation?

Here is the situation:

One of our server died and we need to rebuild it. The server is giving an error “Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed” when we tried to reinstall the OS (in this case, Windows 2003 server). Also, the server doesn’t have any floppy drive.

From searching around on the error message, it seems that the standard OS installation disc doesn’t have the drivers for our server’s hard disk controller. So, we downloaded the driver from the vendor’s website to add as an additional drivers from the windows OS setup. To our surprise, the additional drivers option only accept drivers from a floppy drive. Doing a little more searching, another option is to add the driver into the Windows installation disc (Slipstreaming). Once we did that, the setup was able to see the hard disk and was able to continue on with the installation.

How to create a custom Windows OS installation?

1. First you will need to download and install a program called nLite (Freeware)

2. Once installed, you will need to start the program. It will first prompt you for the source Windows installation disc location (usually this is your CD/DVD drive).

3. Next, it will prompt you for the location of the destination ISO folder. It is best if you create a new folder name for it. (e.g. c:/newwindowsISO)

4. nLite will then copy all the files from the CD/DVD to the new ISO folder (e.g. c:/newwindowsISO)

5. Hit the “Next” button to go to the next screen

6. This is were you select how to customize your new Windows OS disc. In this example, for the “Integrate” section choose drivers, and “Create” section choose bootable ISO.

7. Hit Next and Add the path to the new drivers that you want to add

8. Set through the setup to the burn or create image screen.

9. Choose to create an image then burn it to CD

10. Now you should have a custom Windows OS disc.