OOBE removal

[Alps]

Hi all!

I've seen that many people remove Out of Box Experience in a slim copy of Win XP and I would like to do the same without running into issues. I have XP Pro and Home with activation codes (underneath the laptops). If I insert them in the specific nLite section ("General" tab in "Unattended" section), will I still need to activate Windows?
I know this item is needed for activation and, if I'm not wrong, for other settings included in the "Unattended" section.
Should I set some particular options (like "Unattended mode", "Skip OOBE" or whatever...)?

Thanks for your tips!

[mooms]

Hi Alps

If it's XP Pro VLK, no problem, as this version don't need activation.

For XP Home & Pro, you will need activation, but if the machine have already been activated, I think you can keep the activation files and "inject" them into your install.

 

I always keeped OOBE in XP, removing it caused issues if I remember (it's been a long time since I last made a XP iso).

[Alps]

Great! You got the point, mooms!

5 hours ago, mooms said:

For XP Home & Pro, you will need activation, but if the machine have already been activated, I think you can keep the activation files and "inject" them into your install.

Actually, I already have both OS activated. So I would need to find the activation files, then copy and paste them in the system32 folder of the new installation cd project. If I'm not wrong, WPA.dbl should be the file I need but I remember that Windows needs to be restarted in Safe Mode after the installation in order to replace that file. How to avoid that?

Is it enough to copy the activation files in the system32 folder or will I need to set even something else in nLite in order to skip activation (or, at least, to make this task unattended)?

[mooms]

I don't know, you should search here, and also at http://www.msfn.org/board/, https://ryanvm.net/forum/, https://forums.mydigitallife.info/forum.php

[Alps]

Thanks for the links! I'm just going to check them out!