HOW TO MAKE A MICROSOFT XP PROFESSIONAL SP2, TABLET PC INSTALLATION / BOOT DISK
The following instructions are for owners of ACER Tablet PC Model C310 series, who want to make a Microsoft XP Professional Tablet PC installation / boot disk. Some of the possible uses of an XP TPC installation disk is to recover from system corruption / boot failure and/or recover your data under a variety of problem scenarios, which may not be possible without a bootable operating system disk.
For obvious reasons, the instructions in a general form may be useful for owners of other models that are supplied without the operating system on CD, particularly owners of various models of Tablet PC’s. As a note of caution, I can not attest to the applicability of this instructions for other models as I have not attempted it on any other Tablet PC.
It is very important to backup your data, preferably to an external medium such as a dvd or even to another disk or partition than your working partition (c drive). This is particularly important as you are going to create a new XP Pro TPC disk and follow through with a clean install of the operating system on your active partition (c drive). So backup everything before proceeding.
You will need the following programs to make the XP disk:
1. nLite
http://www.nliteos.com/
2. MS dot net framework (install this first -- required for nLite)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/i...2fdotnetfx.exe
COPY IS ALSO AVAILABLE AT THE nLite SITE IN CASE OF ANY DIFFICULTY
3. Working XPpro SP2 disk (or any XPpro disk and SP2 upgrade executable file [272 mb])
4. Partition Magic (to convert your win32 partition to NTFS)
5. Microsoft VirtualPC (45 DAY TRAIL To test your TPC disk without a full install)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/i...04SP1Trial.zip
6. Copy your XP serial number from the back of the Acer C310 Tablet PC.
In addition to the above, if you are able to obtain Acronis TrueImage (or any similar disk imaging program), you may be able to do a clean install of XP, add your drivers and programs, move your Documents and OE to a data or backup disk/partition, make an image of your main drive in a ready to use condition, that you can restore at a moments notice (in about five minutes or less), without having to go through the lengthy XP, drivers and program installation, all without effecting your data.
You may go ahead and download 1,2 &5, and go about obtaining items 4,6 and Acronis Trueimage, so that you can be ready to proceed.
PROCEDURE:
1. You have to start with the installation of MS dot net framework (a free download from Microsoft), as nLite requires the framework. Following installation of MS dotnetframework and the required reboot, you can install nLite.
2. Make a new directory on your working drive (d drive) called “d:\XPTPC”
3. From your original Acer C drive, copy the following directories (and included files) to D:\XPTPC\
c:\CMPNENTS
c:\DOCS
c:\I386
c:\SUPPORT
c:\VALUEADD
EDIT:
USING WINDOWS EXPLORER, DO A SEARCH OF YOUR ACER "C:\WINDOWS" DIRECTORY FOR OEMBIOS.*
SEARCH RESULTS WILL SHOW THE FOLLOWING 4 FILES-
OEMBIOS.BIN,
OEMBIOS.CAT,
OEMBIOS.DAT &
OEMBIOS.SIG
COPY ABOVE FOUR FILES TO "D:\XPTPC\I386" DIRECTORY.
4. Copy your XP Pro TPC Installation Key (serial number) from the label on the back of your Acer Tablet to a text file named say serial.txt and copy it to your d:\XPTPC directory for easy reference.
5. Insert your XP Pro SP2 disk into your cd/dvd drive and copy the following files from the root directory of the cd to your d:\XPTPC directory.
\AUTORUN.INF 110
\README.HTM 34,301
\SETUP.EXE 1,314,816
\SETUPXP.HTM 85,792
\WIN51 10
\WIN51IP 10
\WIN51IP.SP2 10
If you do not have a working XP PRO SP2 cd, but only and original XP Pro or XP Pro Sp1, you may use nLite to slipstream Service Pack 2 (SP2) and make a working XP Pro SP2 cd. Instructions are provided at the nLite site. It would be best not to do any modifications to the OS files at this stage.
6. Now make a subdirectory under your d:\XPTPC directory called say “CD” and copy all the above listed directories and files to the d:\XPTPC\CD\ subdirectory. This will become your new working directory and in case of any difficulty, you can repeat the above copy process and start over. The final listing of my d:\XPTPC\CD\ subdirectory is noted below for your reference:
dir listing of d:\XPTPC\CD\
<DIR> CMPNENTS
<DIR> DOCS
<DIR> I386
<DIR> SUPPORT
<DIR> VALUEADD
AUTORUN.INF 110
README.HTM 34,301
Serial.txt 29
SETUP.EXE 1,314,816
SETUPXP.HTM 85,792
WIN51 10
WIN51IP 10
WIN51IP.SP2 10
7. Start nLite, select the default language and hit next.
On the next screen, browse to your working directory which would be d:\XPTPC\CD\ if you have followed my instructions. Once you locate the working directory, nLite scans the directory and returns the following information -- Version, Language, Path, Total Size and Free Space. My “Total Size” reads 769.99 MB. If you have a writable cd that will accept 800 MB, your work is almost done. If like me, you have writable cd’s that max at 700 MB, the next task is to reduce the “Total Size” to 700 MB or less. Hit next...
This screen allows you to select various types of processing you can do...We want to reduce the Total Size, so select “Remove Components.” You may also want to consider selecting “Unattended Setup” to help speed up your XP installation process and select “Create a Bootable ISO”, which is the final part of the nLite process. After the selection, hit the next button at the bottom.
The next screen is to select the components for removal. Generally, it will be sufficient to remove unused languages, to bring the size below 700 MB. However, you can also remove Internet Games, Multimedia Samples, Screensavers, Images and Backgrounds, Themes, IIS, etc., to save additional space or to make a custom XP TPC Install Disk for your PC. It would be best to read the nLite instructions and faq / help files that are provided at the site, as removing critical system components will render your TPC disk unusable. After selecting various components for removal, hit next to go to the Unattended Setup options...
Unattended Setup allows one to pick a set of options and automatically provide some information commonly requested during an XP installation. You can for example provide the XP CD-Key Serial Number (located on a label on the back of the Acer C310), your name, administrator password, etc., and not have to type in all this information for every installation. I usually set Unattended to “PROVIDE DEFAULT”, which saves on the typing and selecting, but allows me to make modifications if desired. When you have completed the selections, hit next to move to Patches...
On the following options, I would suggest a degree of caution. Possibly on your first XP TPC disk, only remove languages that are not needed and possibly some of the multimedia to bring the disk size below 700 mb. I will run through the following screens quickly and you can experiment on the same after becoming familiar with nLite...
This is the Patches option, hit next for Tweaks...
Tweaks include many options. I would recommend selecting “Classic Setup” which seems to speed up XP installation. Leave the rest of the options to experiment later...
The next screen takes you to the nLite processing page, where your selected options are processed and a final XP TPC disk is made...
Here you see following processing, nLite has reduced the disk size by 178.8 mb in my case (with deletion of all images and multimedia). Disk size is 548.51 mb. One can go up to 700 mb to fit on a standard cd. Hit next to write the ISO file...
Here you can select the location to write the ISO (cd image) file. Once the image is completed, you can write it to a CD using NERO or any similar CD writing software. This completes the process of making a custom XP Tablet PC boot / installation disk from the files on your Acer Tablet PC.
8. For those of you who wish to test the new XP TPC installation without writing to a CDR and formally installing on your C drive, you may install MS Virtual PC 2004 (45 day trail). You can use Daemon Tools to mount your ISO image as a CD drive and use it to install on to a virtual hard disk using Virtual PC.
I use Partition Magic to convert my original Acer Fat 32 drives to NTFS. One relatively smaller (10 GB) C drive for my XP TPC operating system and all my essential programs. The balance space on the hard drive can be your “Data” partition or “D” drive. Following the clean installation of XP TPC, essential Acer Drivers and various Programs, I have taken an image of the C drive using Acronis Drive Image and placed the image on my “D” data partition. All my data files (My Documents, Outlook Express, Address Book, Outlook Account Information, My Music, My Pictures, etc. have been moved to my “D” Data drive. I can restore my “C” drive to “Factory” or “Clean” condition at any time by booting of the Acronis CD and restoring my C drive image in about 5-6 minutes.
Please be sure to read nLite FAQ and manuals before proceeding with the above. I am including some screen shots of MS Virtual PC installation of XP TPC for your reference.
A PDF file (814 KB) with all the screens is available. I will be pleased to e-mail the same if you contact me. I wrote this instruction set after being contacted by several forum users for the same, following one of my earlier posts. It is a bit long winded and may be difficult without the screans referred to in the instructions. Hope you find it helpful.
Instructions for making an XP TPC Disk 
