How To Make Your Own Custom Vista Installation Media

Ok if you are the proud owner of any recent brand name computer, it most likely has a recovery partition that holds an image of your hard drive and a bunch of bloatware and crap. If you recover to factory default settings, you might have to spend hours removing the garbage, installing Windows updates, tweaking settings, and so on.

The way I see it, it's much easier to have a clean install of Windows Vista with no bloatware or unneeded software, with all the updates and drivers already in place. How do you do that? Follow the instructions below.

First, you need to obtain a copy of a Windows Vista [version] Service Pack 1 OEM install DVD. In my case, I'll be using Vista Home Premium. Where do you get such a disc? You should already know the answer to that. As long as you use the product key on the bottom of your laptop, or the side of your desktop, you're good to go.

Once you have that, download and install vLite. vLite won't start until you first install the Windows Automated Installation Kit. I hope you have lots of hard drive space, because you're going to need it for this project. You might need DAEMON Tools to mount the Windwos AIK .iso

What else do you need? Updates. Head to RyanVM's message board and grab Vista Post-SP1 Update Pack and Vista Post-SP1 .NET Pack. Extract them to a folder somewhere on your hard drive.

Now for your drivers. There is a nice little tool called Double Driver that will make a copy of all the drivers on your current system for you and put them in a folder. Select the ones you want, and hit the Backup button. Make sure you get the essentials, network and wireless adapters, video card, sound, webcam, so on. Make note of where your driver folder is.

Now you're ready to start up vLite. Mount the Windows Vista install DVD iso with DAEMON Tools, and point vLite there for the installation files. Make a new folder for custom files when it asks you to. Then when you get to the Hotfixes page, include everything in the RyanVM update pack folders. Under Drivers, include everything in your Double Driver backup folder. You can go through all the other tweaks and settings as you please. I took the time to disable any services I won't need using Black Viper's guide.

In the seciton for entering your product key, type the legal product key on the sticker that's affixed to your laptop/desktop.

Once everything's done, let it integrate and create the ISO for you. Now you can burn the ISO and have your very own clean fully-up-to-date fully-customized driver-injected Windows Vista Service Pack 1 installation media.

Enjoy.

EDIT: If you're trying to make your own Vista install disc from the files on a recovery partition, I suggest you look elsewhere because to my knowledge, it is very difficult/sometimes impossible to do.