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I've noticed recently that a lot of people are either finding problems with SP2, or they don't seem to be getting the best performance out of it. In my view, there are two ways of installing the service pack with windows for the best performance and stability.
1. Format, install your copy of windows, install SP2 on the clean installation once you reach the desktop.
2. Follow this guide to install a slipstreamed copy of XP with SP2 straight from the CD, with a lot less hassle in the long run.
You Will Need:
- WinRAR
- Smart Project's "ISO Buster"
- Ahead Nero CD-RW software
- CD Writer drive and blank CD-R!
Caching the Windows CD contents to hard disk
To begin with, open up Nero Burning ROM and select the “Extras” menu, followed by the “Save Tracks…” option. Choose the drive that your original windows CD is in and configure the window as below:
Once the process has completed, you will be left with an ISO image file on your desktop. Now, unzip the entire contents of this archive to the location C:\XPCD\ or wherever you prefer. This is the long way around, but copying the files from the explorer view of the CD may not copy absolutely everything, and this way it is done for certain.
Obtaining the bootable image file from the OS CD
Install ISO Buster (obtainable from http://www.smart-projects.net/isobuster.htm) and upon running the application, click the “Free funct. only” button so that you can use it without needing to pay for it.
The main program window will show you the contents of the XP CD that should still be in your CD drive, and by highlighting the “Bootable CD” option on the left, you can then right click the “Microsoft Corporation.img” file in order to extract it to the PC. The reason for this is obvious later. Place the file where you will remember it is (the desktop is easiest).
Integrating SP2 into our folder of the XP CD
Download the full network installation file (~265MB) of SP2 from XPSP2 . Using WinRAR, open the file (which has no icon) and drag the i386 folder within it to the main root of C:\ so that the folder C:\i386\ appears.
If you have not done this correctly, the following step will not work. Now click start, run, “cmd” and press enter (without the speech marks of course). Do as I have below, the command for integration refers to the location of your XPCD which we extracted before. In my case, this folder is F:\XPCD\.
A window pops up with the process occurring, and once it has completed you can click ok on the window that pops up.
Setting up CD burning
Open Nero Burning ROM and select to create a new bootable CDROM. Set up the window as shown:
On the Label tab, choose from the following for a disc name:
- XP Pro: WXPCCP_EN
- XP Home: WXHCCP_EN
- XP Pro OEM: WXPOEM_EN
- XP Home OEM: WXHOEM_EN
There are even stranger names for discs with SP1 integrated already!
Finally, on the ISO tab, select the settings shown below.
Click “new” top right to open the explorer view, and drag the contents of the XPCD folder into the CD so that it will be written to the disk.
Because we selected the .img file to be our boot image, our disk should be bootable, but only if you set the “Number of loaded sectors” to 4.
Write this to a blank CD-R and hey presto, you should have a working XP installation CD with SP2 slipstreamed so you hardly have to do a thing to setup your system, just install hardware device drivers, tweak it all up and you’re done!
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Thank you! 
Originally Posted by DaftpuNk
