Since I wanted to be "legit" (and for the free upgrade to Vista), I bought an OEM copy of XP Media Center Edition today. When I first tried to install MCE, it said it couldn't find any hard drives, so I figured it had to be the add-on ATA133 card I was using. Since I don't have a floppy drive, I couldn't use the F6 option at Windows setup, and I didn't want to swap cables around or go buy a USB floppy drive. I'm glad I had that problem, as I found something really cool - "nLite."

http://www.nliteos.com/

This program lets you build an install disk (DVD) with added drivers, service packs, and updates. It also lets you enter user names, product key, network settings, etc. for an unattended Windows installation (you can also strip out Windows components). It took a while to build the disk, but the MCE installation was a no-brainer using nLite. It was also faster, since I used a DVD instead of three CDs.

For next time, I'll build an nLite disk that includes the 90+ Windows updates I had to download after MCE was done.