I was talking with a guy from the Dutch embassy in Beijing a few days back about our article on slipstreaming. He had a similar experience, and between us we figured out a way forward...

"On the Intel website I read this message when I downloaded the Chipset driver (under Known Issues):

“During the Windows setup stage; the USB keyboard and mouse may not be accessible. This is because the legacy USB driver may be inactive when Windows enters the GUI mode. There is a small window of time when it may not be possible for the system to accept user input. Since the Chipset Software Installation Utility may cause prompts during the Windows setup stage, it should be ensured that the system BIOS support for legacy USB keyboard and mouse is enabled.”

Link: http://downloadmirror.intel.com/df-support/12150/ENG/relnotes.htm

So first I had the RAID problem and know I had a USB problem. Well I couldn’t find any USB legacy support in the bios, so that “solution” from Intel was useless.

I already used the RAID Controller driver from the Intel website and now also the chipset drivers and slipstreamed those into the Windows installation. (I am not sure if the chipset drivers are necessary for the installation.)

Drivers from Intel website can be found here: http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-022768.htm

I did not use the Dell drivers. Some of them can be unzipped to a folder, but the chipset driver just gave me a folder with setup.exe and some cab-files. I thought/think you cannot feed them to nLite, could be wrong though.

However this installation cd-rom still didn’t work, since my USB mouse and keyboard (or floppy drive for that matter) still stopped working the moment the Windows GUI popped up during the setup/installation.

I then choose nLite to automate the entire installation process, including date/time setting, admin account.

This worked, finally!"

So, it looks like the final step required is automating the install. Hopefully this information will help someone else.