Vista Update Integration

[Jody Thornton]

From the Windows 8 Forum, I asked "What is Vista Unofficial SP3?"

Essentially, [Vista Unofficial SP3] is the sp2 installation media with updates since then pre integrated.

You can include your favorite reg tweaks,e.g. context menu entries, turn off uac, etc.

I also added recovery option - putting boot.wim into a folder on the os partition, which responds to the F8 key, similar to how it is done in 7 and up. You can include usb3 drivers and anything else you want in boot.wim as well e.g your imaging program perhaps Aomei backupper or macrium, and a partition manager, possibly an a/v scanner too. )

Works well, though the install.wim is bigger of course. Very useful for repair installs as well as clean installs.

Couple of ways to do it. One is to install vista onto fresh partition, skip product key, hit ctrl+shift+f3 and it will reboot into audit mode. D/l and install updates, rebooting a couple of times to make sure they have all gone in, then tick "generalise" in the syprep box and reboot into a different os. From the other os you can capture the syprepped vista partition as install.wim.

Another way is to copy the vista install media to a drive ( just copy and paste is fine). Then use something like this to install the updates into install.wim.

So I could envision the contents of install.wim to be the installed image of Vista on an HDD, couldn't I? In fact, if I wanted to install Vista, a couple applications and some updates, I could create a WIM image of that installation, and then reinstall that same thing down the road automatically, as if it were a fresh installation?

 

[MilesAhead]

This may be a good starting point:
How to Slipstream Windows Vista SP1 and SP2

 

[SIW2]

So I could envision the contents of install.wim to be the installed image of Vista on an HDD, couldn't I? In fact, if I wanted to install Vista, a couple applications and some updates, I could create a WIM image of that installation, and then reinstall that same thing down the road automatically, as if it were a fresh installation?

Yes, exactly like this:

install vista onto fresh partition, skip product key, hit ctrl+shift+f3 and it will reboot into audit mode. D/l and install updates, rebooting a couple of times to make sure they have all gone in, then tick "generalise" in the syprep box and reboot into a different os. From the other os you can capture the syprepped vista partition as install.wim.

Easy way to capture the vista partition as Install.wim is with free program Gimagex, works fine for Vista and newer. If you running Gimagex from within win7 you don't need anything else as win7 already has wimgapi.

If your os does not already include wimgapi, you can d/l it easily, you don't need the whole waik thing.

https://www.autoitconsulting.com/site/image-engineering/gimagex-v2-1-0-released-windows-8-1/