nLite – Deployment Tool for the Bootable Unattended Windows Installation

Every once in a while all users come to face one of the necessities of running a Windows-powered machine – reinstalling the system. In some cases, the faulty registry caused it, in others, it’s an update gone awry; it might have to do with that new graphics card you installed, or you just might want a fresh start with your computer. Whatever your reason is, chances are you don’t want to spend several hours sitting beside the computer while it does its work. Enter nLite, a Windows 2000/XP/2003 installation deployment tool which lets you tailor the installation to your needs. This tool is valuable enough to be considered one of the essential utilities, so you should consider expanding it to include this little utility as well.

The Technical Side

Behind the foot-long program subtitle lies a tool with two distinct roles. One of them is automatism, which is something even an average user will learn to appreciate. If you’ve already had a computer for several years and had to do a reinstall, you already know most of your preferences – for instance, your default language and keyboard layout, local settings, Windows components you can’t go without such as Minesweeper, or even patches such as Service Packs and miscellaneous updates. While it’s generally possible to reinstall and apply patches every time, you need to ask yourself if you really wish to go through it over and over again. If you’ve decided to create an updated installer containing the OS, the most recent service pack and all the patches you downloaded until a certain date, nLite will let you do all that. If you wish a common set of drivers automatically applied during the installation, so be it. If you want to add applications such as antiviruses, browsers, IM clients, archivers or utilities, nLite will allow it so long as there’s a definition file for it that allows integration. In other words, you’ll be able to create a bootable image that, once burned onto a CD and popped into the drive, starts itself and proceeds to reinstall the OS without you having to even lift a finger. If you do this for a particular client, your workload will be reduced from that point onward, yet at the same time you’ll get your work done more efficiently and cleanly.

The other benefit of nLite is minimization. While this ability isn’t self-evident, once you discover how and what to crop, you’ll be able to further customize your installation. The basic idea of this is that some Windows features will neccessarily be useless to you – be it Outlook Express, MSN Messenger, the PCMCIA driver set (which is usually only useful on laptops) – all of those can be removed from the installation procedure, making the final burnable image smaller, faster to install and with a lower disk footprint once installed. Users have been known to minimize their Windows 2000 installers to as little as 60 MB – it would be a very limited machine, but if your aim was sparing every byte of RAM once the machine was started, you could trim your installation to a very lean one.

The legal side

Unfortunately, there’s always the legal side of using nLite, or creating any kind of Windows copy, for that matter. While you should generaly be able to create a backup copy of Windows under whichever country’s law, don’t keep several instances of the same licensed copy – keep at most one copy, whether it’s modified or not. Some of you might wonder about the legality of creating a modified copy of legit software. So far, to the best of our knowledge, nobody has been harrased for having an nLitened copy of Windows – but then again, your mileage may vary depending on local country laws.

The rule stated above goes double for any of your clients. Obviously, it’s a very, very bad idea to give out copies of your own installation because of the license key which belongs to one person and them alone. In other words, you’ll have to be able to tailor the installation for your clients using their own install CDs – which is a neccessity anyway considering they have their own preferences and needed drivers. Either way, don’t get tempted to spread around your copy of the OS – or worse yet, theirs. The clients probably wouldn’t take kindly to it, and neither would the BSA.

Future support and client involvement

Now, one of the more important questions is how to make your clients aware of the tool and what it can do for them. The clients always want the job done properly and in the shortest time possible; you have pretty much the same objective. By introducing nLite to your clients you’ll have the ability to customize their own OS to their own machine, whether it’s because of the weaker machine, or the neccessity to get the computer repaired as soon as possible – it’s a win-win situation.

Now, if you’re worried about Vista not being supported, fret not. One of the best features of this utility is not just the fact it’s being continually upgraded with external installers – if you’ve already got Vista and you want to see to which extent it can be trimmed, head out and download vLite. nLite will probably remain in use for quite a while, but just in case someone needs a Vista reinstall this soon, give it a go.

 
Written by Boris M