DiSiLLUSiON

I have a few small suggestions, based on my installation of Vista with nearly every option removed: - Add the following registry tweak: When users have selected IME for removal, the Command Prompt still loads conime.exe (wich is not removed), wich searches for the ime files for a full 10 to 20 seconds before giving up. Thus, it slows down the opening of a Command Prompt instance considerably. Using the following registry tweak disables the loading of / searching for conime.exe, it's IME files and the IME input in the Command Prompt: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console\dword:LoadConIme:0x00000000(0). Of course, the tweak should be applied to the default user profile before a user profile is created. - Make sure that, when the removal of IME is selected, all IME files are actually removed. There are a bunch of files still in system32\IME\shared, and as far as I know it is unnecassery when IME has been removed. Also, the earlier mentioned conime.exe is still present in system32. - Some or all of the TableTextService files are still present in Program Files\Windows NT\TableTextService. I can't remember if there was an option to remove these, but if there's not, it's an easy fix to remove these files from the Vista installation. There are just 3 entries in the registry; one for the dll under CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID, and 2 for the text files under ehm.. Microsoft\Windows\IME\Locale (or something like it). - An interesting option would be a little wizard-like tool, where the user would choose his/her enviroment (at home, corporate etc) and it would then disable some of the absolutely unneccasery services associated. For example, IPSec services aren't used when a user isn't in a corporate enviroment and/or doesn't use VPN. Or another example: In a corporate enviroment, the network mapping services (and non-pnp drivers) aren't really needed. A lot of services can be disabled this way. This idea isn't based on the concept of in-depth tweaking (for wich someone should have in-depth knowledge about vista's services), but more like a general assesement. I think users of vLite not only use it to make the disk space vista takes smaller, but especially the memory footprint. - I don't remember if there was an option to remove the 'customer improvement program' stuff in vista, but it would be nice to have, even though the files and settings (and taskscheduler items) aren't that many... It's the idea that counts. - There are certain registry classes and other items that are kept when certain components are checked for removal in vLite. For example, removing the games doesn't remove the GameExplorer links, folders and registry classes. I don't know if this behaviour is intended, but it seems a bit sloppy. - Something I would like to see in vLite is the removal of the Component Cache items that have been deleted from Vista with vLite. It's not that hard, just check for the files each component has and check if vlite removes them. If so, then also remove the component from the component cache. However, if something like this were attempted, then there might be definate hurdles ahead... Such as wrecking Windows Update. I haven't tried it out, and I don't know if Windows Update verifies all components... but if it does, then things suddenly get much less easy. But on the other hand, not removing the components isn't ideal either, since Windows Update happily places files, directories and registry entries on your system dedicated to components you've selected for removal in vLite, whenever a new update is available. Atleast, that's what I suspect Windows Update of doing. I think I'll go deeper into this. - The last option I would like to see -it's a biggie-, is the removal of Side-By-Side Assemblies aka. WinSxS. This is definately a though one, and not one I'd expect to see in vLite... but it would be nice. For me, WinSxS is not needed. I'd rather have the associated DLL versions redirected to the program's own folder when installing, so it can load them from there.. Or not at all. The idea behind WinSxS is noble: the removal of bugs and/or errors that crop up when outdated or newer versions of certain dll's are used in wich functions invariable are different then the version the programmer used. However, personally, I don't care. I'd like the newest version of my dll's and if a program hasn't updated for a while (and thus needs an old version of a DLL), I'll just search for another program with the same functionality. So to me, all that disk space that all those versions of all those dll's take is way too much. So yeah, it would be nice to have, but it wouldn't be an expected feature of vLite. Other then these points, I love the program. I tried for the last month to remove stuff from a Vista installation myself to see what exactly has changed since XP, and I know how time-consuming something like that can be, especially with 'debugging' certain component removals. Some files are tied up in really strange ways, it's one big plate of italian spaghetti under the hood.