The entire first portion of this guide will be centered around the use of the popular "nLite" application, which provides a very clean, intuitive, and easy interface for the customization process. It supports customization of Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.

nLite is a freeware application developed by "nuhi", who I don't know much about, other than that he is a Computer Science student, born in 1982, and living in Croatia. His nLite homepage can be found here. nLite has garnered quite a large enthusiast following, as can be seen by reading the nLite forum on the MSFN discussion boards.

nLite seems to be in a perpetual beta stage, as there are constant improvements and changes being made to it, but don't let that discourage you. The program is in a state of active development, and any bugs found are quickly fixed and a new version released.

The basic run-down of the nLite process works like this:

• 1. Copy original Windows installation files off the CD to a local directory
• 2. Run nLite, perform customizations
• 3. Burn resulting ISO image to a new CD, and install off that CD

Astute readers will notice one thing right away: a functional Windows PC is needed in order to make use of nLite. This is perhaps the only downside to the program, but it is not something that can be avoided. This is a perfect opportunity for those of you who have been itching to reinstall Windows because of all the crud that has built up, yet still it somehow barely works ;-)

nLite also requires the .NET Framework, version 1.1 to be installed. However, nuhi has made a news posting on his website dated January 18th, 2005, mentioning that it is now possible to run nLite without the .NET Framework if you use his supplied runtime files. You merely have to download the supplied archive, and extract it into the same directory as the nLite program files.

He warns that people who already have the .NET Framework installed should not use this method, as it will invalidate the .NET installation.

Let's now proceed to installation.