Antonino

I personally back up mine on a regular basis, the only difference being, mine are not so huge. they tend to be about 2gigs.

that is that is exactly what I meant at the outset - is there any point in differencing at all? talking of less than 2gigs?

Is it really worth the trouble?

formatting with nthelper like greased lightning!!!! excellent!!! then what? winntsetup?

I can get the wim ok, out of any vhd, thru winntsetup

for the time being, I am testing its diagnostics, which seems accurate - right clicking on the drive and getting the data concerning it in a command box. the problem to which I alluded was not due to any fault whatsoever of nthelper.exe, but to the reduction (miniwinning) of any vhd which does not take into account the dlls that any executable requires in order to run properly. what one normally does in such cases is get the specific executable running on an unminiwinned vhd and run process explorer to check which dlls it needs in order to run properly and get a txt listing all of them. then each string on the list (c:\windows\syswow64\blablabla.dll in the case of nthelper.exe) will be turned into something like copy c:\windows\syswow64\blablabla.dll d:\nthelperdlls and so on till the end of the list, which will be saved as *cmd or *.bat Once the dlls have been gathered, one runs the miniwinned vhd and copies all dlls in nthelperdlls to syswow64 and ur software that did not work before will work ok now. now do u want a specific problem that I might have at the moment which nthelper could contribute to solving? well, of all the vhds I have only one runs ok as ramdisk, and I do not know why this one does and the other ones do not. they crash with BSOD and the error signaled does not enable me to tell what has gone wrong. as filedisks all of them vhds run ok. as ramdisks, all of them load into ram, but only one of them completes the booting process to the desktop interface. any idea why?

well now it does run on any vhd, even miniwinned, it was some syswow64 dll or other. in a bit for the findings. i do not know how to connect it with winntsetup though, but I will tell u what it does in and of itself that can be useful, at least from my point of view.

pls bear with me, I had to exit a miniwinned vhd because it would not run there and enter an unminiwinned vhd, where it of course does run, now I want to check with process explorer for the dlls it need to run on any miniwinned vhd, and then I will tell u what I have found.

thank u ever so much! I would like to try and contribute with my feedback, however meager it may be.

how do we get nthelper?

wow, this must be brilliant!!!

yes, pls, do repair that asap

thanks jfx, I already knew the junction trick and I extensively use it. I was wondering if the above folders could be made special folders as anywhere-locatable as, say, documents, pictures, sendto, startmenu, so as to move them wherever one pleased. between u and me and anyone concerned, it would be wonderful to treat any folder like that if the stuff in it is not involved in the booting to the extent that the system demands that it be in c:\ . don't forget that my participation in the reduction of windows by wimboot and winntsetup started from my provocative assumption whereby windows is whatever must reside on c:\ in order for the os to boot and reach the interface + whatever else, which should preferably reside anywhere other than c:\ ; the more portables we have instead of installable software, the neater and simpler the system. my vhd's are the same over months or years, they dont get clogged with installed stuff - whatever was once the prerogative of the mac and linux is now possible with windows as well thanks to a few of u. that is why i insist that miniwin is not a curiosity, but some more efficient form of os to be seriously taken into consideration even if ur hardware can fit more stuff for an os - that saved space could be used for more substantial stuff than a bloated os.

interesting point, jfx, may I take it as a hint? well I will try to explain to u what I would like to do. I would like to tell winntsetup to write C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET to d:\Microsoft.NET, c:\windows\assembly to d:\assembly, c:\windows\system32\driverstore to d:\driverstore. can it be done? if yes, how to?

Well, not much of a difference then; how many do u have to bake per day?

.@dimo70 The Great Bulgarian I hope ur findings are correct, 20x is like greased lightning! What I initially meant eas that minwin contains txt files that will be processed by the tool if they are meaningful (containing paths to existent files and/or folders), no matter what their files are called (even pamelo.txt is pricessed). In the dism hatch, instead, whatever u specify is processed, so whether it is pamelo, or sample or mangiacaprini, if it is there and u specify it, it will be processed. So, minwin both and Dism either or

U might as well leave sample.ini and modify it instead of creating another 1.

Another thing I often do when dealing with system32 and syswow64 dlls, is to keep a software-differenced dll bank that I have "set up" thanks to process explorer. when some software so dear to me happens to fail to work on account of a too radical deletion, I run it on a deletion-free system it still works on and while still open, I run process explorer to see what dlls have potentially guaranteed its working. process explorer lets me draw a list of them which i turn int a batch or cmd file that copies all dlls concerned to a folder that I distinctly name and keep, integrate the "chopped" system by copying the dlls to the system32 and/or syswow64 folders without overwriting, and the software concerned resumes working 99% of the times. I think this info would help some other one of us who will have been through "the same movie" another day.

for instance, has anyone tried deleting any systemapps to see what happens? I don't know, let's say, another useful thing that I can think of is the different files that guarantee the functioning of ethernet as opposed to the different files that gurarantee the functioning and config of wifi. me I have produced a generous accounting of the nvidia kinda thing. another initiative, probably from someone having ati instead, would be to give all the info possible concerning the minimal dll contribution to have graphic acceleration with ati, as i did with nvidia. I venture to think that miniwin is not to be considered a mere curiosity, but a working os in its own right (at least from a functional point of view), provided one knows what one wants from an os. me, I think i do.

so when I creeate removeappx.ini, I might as well get rid of sample.ini. I just copy the content from sample to removeappx, right? but to get an overall grasp of the thing, whatever I call an ini file here in the dism subfolder and point to it from the dism slot in the tool mask, it would be processed anyway. I probably have to select one ini, so the inis are mutually exclusive, is this correct? and all in all, do u have any more "harmless", "safe", strings to suggest so we get rid of more things that we do not need, or do we have to go by trial and error on our own? it would be more constructive if each of us told the world here what not to delete lest software x, y and/or z should not work, so we can have a meaningful databank. what do u think of it?

i gather we are talking of an ini file other than sample.ini, or else, some other "strings" to integrate sample.ini with. I also had jfx tell me to write some RemoveAppx.ini to contain all this, but I do not know if I should use it instead of sample.ini, together with sample.ini in the same subfolder, or someplace else.

when it comes to appx, may I also remove registry entries related to them or do u not recommend it?

well, attaboy jfx, I can only confirm ur advice has proven right!!! could u think of some appx that still want deleting or would that be preposterous? the only caveat I can think of, just if I wanna be a stickler, is that the space warning sign still appears (even with the compact config, unless u give it some 5gb, but that is just a detail compared to my most recent discovery. Keep it up and brief us all the more often!

Sorry JFX, I now know what u mean, I think I have found both options that u mentioned, and it is a pity I haven't implemented them so far. better late than never. Wonderful advice anyway, i figure, in a bit to confirm.

Tx 4 ur reply. Pls tell me how i can practically enable these features that seem very useful. As this is the 1st time i have learned of them, my post envisaged that one installs and then points to an lzx.bat. if u tell me how, from now on, i can use the tool to do these things, i would pretty much appreciate it. Tx in advance.