Gone are the days when end users had to spend hours in order to integrate Internet Explorer into a copy of the Windows operating system. The slipstreaming process when it comes down to Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 has been simplified to a maximum. Now, putting together a singular image by using Vista SP1 and IE8 is a streamlined task which takes only a few minutes. The end result will deliver a Vista SP1 image complete with IE8, according to the video demonstration put together by Matt Hester, Microsoft IT Pro Evangelist.

"When you think back with IE7 and Windows XP, how did you actually slipstream these file in? You had to load XP, load IE7 and you had to work with those images, and then rebuilt that image. This would take an hour or two do do this things. Well, now because of the way we've actually done the install technologies with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, we make it a lot easier to slipstream, and mount, and work with these slipstream images directly, so this whole process should only take us a few minutes to accomplish," Hester stated.

While the actual slipstreaming process of IE8 into Vista SP1 is not too complex, the video embedded at the bottom of this article will literally make the task child's play. The screencast deals exclusively with Vista SP1, but for the RTM edition of the latest Windows client, additional steps need to be taken. Still, my advice is to simply use Vista SP1 because of the huge benefits it delivers over the RTM version.

"My teammate Matt 'Mongo' Hester just posted a pretty cool demo screencast on the process of adding bits (in this case, the currently-in-beta next version of Internet Explorer) into an offline image of Windows Vista. Yes.. 'offline' because it's an installation of Vista that exists in a .wim file. So we're applying IE 8 as 'just another update' into the image. (And although Matt is using the original Vista SP1 media, this could also just as easily have been applied to a sysprepped and ImageX captured image of a Vista SP1 system)," explained Kevin Remde, IT Pro Evangelist for Microsoft.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is available for download here.


Slipstreaming Internet Explorer 8 into Windows Vista