Sorry it took so long to report back, but by the time I got back into my production environment, it was past midnight, and i knew that once I started typing I'd be there for ages.
My System Specs.
#1. Asus A8n SLi Deluxe Rev 1.02
AMD64 3700 San Diego E4
1Gb DDR400
Asus EN6600GT Top
WDC WD1200JB (IDE) + WD2500JB (IDE) + SamSung SP2504C (SATA II) + WD 2500JB (Ext IEEE 1394)
2* LG DVDRAM GSA-4167B (IDE) + LG DVDRAM GSA-2164D (Ext USB)
Silverstone TJ05 Chassis
Silverstone ST60F PSU.
The good news is that I got the installation to complete this time. I turned the raid controller on for the NVRAID, but left RAID on all the IDE and SATA discs disabled as suggested, and also unplugged the IDE discs leaving on the SamSung Spinpoint 250Gb on the NV SATA port, and the two optical drives on their own IDE connections. I also unplugged the Firewire and USB connections to my external Drives, Scanner and Joypad, but left the printer and mouse plugged in (although the printer (an ESP 950) was turned off).
The Slipstream disc was based on XP Home Edition, +SP2 +RVM hotfixes, and all Bâshrat the Sneaky driverpacks available over the weekend. I used Method 2 and elected to keep the drivers, but I'm not sure if this worked or not.
I was also really chuffed with how fast it appeared to be going too. It started booting from the slipstream CD at 23:21 and was rebooting after GUI setup mode, by 23:40.
The only point when I was worried was at the first restart, and got a blank blue screen for an extended period before the GUI part of the installation started. I wondered if I should have turned off the NVRAID controller at that point (between text mode and GUI set up), but then remembered that I'd had a similar pause when I'd tested the same disc on my WDC 250 IDE drive at the weekend, after it had failed to install to the SATA drive correctly at the time, and also that the device detection was part of the GUI set up process. Feedback point : If this blue screen (not a BSOD by the way) is when Method 2 is extracting its drivers from the CD to the hard drive, it would be useful to have a message come up to say so. << Moderator edit: we do that now. <<
After turning the NVRAID back off again, I let it start Windows for the first time, but it hit another re-boot, flashing up a blue screen breifly in the process, but I changed the next restart to Safe mode, and although it paused at MUP.sys, the system was definately doing something, and came up with the Welcome Screen a few seconds later.
When I clicked into the Administrator Account, it Started the DP finish process, and I guess I must have forgotten to turn of the driver signing checks in the WinNT.SIF file, because it ran through a long series of Unsigned Driver Warning screens, but seemed to cancel these automatically.
It also seems to have installed the Chipset drivers for my Asus A8N SLi Deluxe Motherboard, because at the same time as running the DPFinish commands, the Add New Hardware started and detected my Video Card, and wanted to connect to Windows Update to look for the correct driver. But it returned an error about an incorrect parameter, it didn't install the graphics driver.
This part ran from 23:42 to 23:51, when I restarted the system again, and this time it logged in normally. This time the Add new hardware correctly updated the graphics driver, and a quick look at the Device Manager showed that everything appeared to have been detected. At least there were no Pling or Query overlays to denote unknown of incorrectly installed devices.
The only thing that I'm not sure of, is how to tell if the slipstreamed installation has put in the latest version of the nForce4 drivers that are requierd for the latest BIOS updates for the motherboard.
I've tried looking at the propertes tabs on a variety of components that seem to be part of the nForce4 set up, but all the driver dates are from last year, and they have version numbers like 5.1.2600.534, or 5.1.2600.445, or 5.1.2600.450.
Can any one advise what I should be looking out for, or if it has infact put in a previous version of the drivers, I remember seeing something about mofifying the DP to remove the ones that don't apply to my board - can someone help with this?
Overall, I'd also like to say that I'm impressed with the new version of the driver pack software, except as I said that it doesn't appear to have kept the drivers. Oh yes, and the other thing I noticed when I was trying to install something else that the Hardware Wizard couldn't see the drivers on the CD either, because they were all in .7z files. Is this a consequence of Method 2, and would method 1 let me install drivers from the CD, because they'd be CAB files instead of 7z ones?
Asus A8nSLi Deluxe; AMD 64 3700 CPU, Asus EN 6600 GT, 2x Spinpoint 250Gb drives on NV SATA II connection, WDC 250GB & WDC 120GB drive on IDE, 2x LG GSA 4167 DVD RAM drives.