suryad

Thanks for the info...been itching to buy a brand new desktop with an FX or dual Opteron setup...but I must be patient for the multicore procs!!!

Yeah I tried it but the activation file did not work for me. So I just clicked activate online and it activated my copy of nLited XP.

Yeah I agree with all you guys are saying. But I got another question. I read something about backing up this one particular file that has the activation information in it...so that way you can bypass calling Windows Activation...and it only works if you are installing the same copy on the same machine all over again...? Is that true? Is that even legal?!

Well it could be the increased number of registers the program code now has access to. Very nice numbers Marsden.

Yeah I figured you had a M$ IDE on your machine. .NET is an exact copy of J2EE but just Windows centric whereas J2EE is language centric. Just seems to me that .NET is a huge bunch of bloat on top of XP that is why i never really went in that direction. And yeah you are right in saying that .NET is going to be vital because all of Longhorn is based on .NET.

Question is alex why in the heck do you have the .NET framework installed on your machine in the first place?

Yes I swear by nLite. Kudos to the guy who developed this brilliant idea. Thank god I was able to get useless junk outta the system. I believe other OSes have always had the ability of the user compiling into the kernel what they only need and not what they dont. This is as close as to what Windows users will ever get to that kind of awesome functionality. I just hope Longhorn is just as easily configurable with an nLite for Longhorn.

So XPe is then good for what kinds of computing scenarios? Is it usable as an everyday platform to run games and stuff like that where max performance is required?

My install cd came down to about 130 mb and let me tell ya I have not faced any future software installation problems. I have had absolutely 0 crashes, or programs dying on me or spyware getting into my machine. I never shutdown my computer...laptop...its always on hibernate or standby if I dont use it. There is no slowdown or gradual eating away of RAM because of prolonged use...and after tweaking the registry for performance...my nLited install is just blazing fast. Splinter Cell 3 is coming out and I was able to play it with no jerkiness and I was playing it at 1280 with some anisotropic turned on. I will probably now be able to play at a higher res or maybe with higher aniso without any loss in performance.

They will make an SP3 is what I read...and they are going to have Avalon and Indigo compatible with XP...so I think I will be sticking with XP for a while...till the kinks in Longhorn get sorted out...though Longhorn looks extremely interesting...I want to see if it is actually more secure and faster than XP is.

Longhorn is not and will not run on the Unix kernel...that would be shameful for M$. They are adding some tenchologies maybe but not the kernel in itself. And as for the source code of Solaris that will not take too long. I hear in a few months, OpenSolaris which is already online will have the source code for people to download and tinker with...with a restricted license of course in that any modifications made at once becomes property of Sun.

Err dont know if anyone has mentioned this but have you tried getting the arabic language pack?! Usually that clears everything....

Err if you reinstall over the existing installation but leave the filesystem intact, I think the registry gets reset..so though the OS has no knowledge of the existence of your programs you can still run them by dbl clicking the exe file... But yeah sucks mate that your sister switched account privileges on you. I think best bet is to get her password...somehow...

Clean out your prefetch folder, your windows temp folder...a helpful tool to automate a lot of tasks would be Crap Cleaner as well as System Mechanic which enables you to defrag and compact your registry hive which can free up some space as well. Make sure your registry is quite streamlined using the aforementioned tools. Make sure that your IE Temporary Internet folder is not oversized. I think thats about all I got to say man. Hope that helps.

I used nLite and my install CD went from a previous size of over 550 mb to 130 mb or so with SP2 streamlined into it. All I had to do was get the newer March updates/hotfixes and I was ready to go. I disabled System Restore as that takes up resources, set my pagefile to system managed, decreased the size of my Temporary Internet folder to a 100 mb from the previous few gigs...and it kept my machine compact. Currently I have Adobe Acrobat 7, NetBeans, Java 1.50 Update 2 SDK, Windows Media 10, Winamp, PowerDVD 6, Nero 6.6, Spybpt, Spy Doctor, System Mechanic, JEdit, Trillian...etc...etc(just to give an idea) and am using around 4.73 gb of hdd space. As for the .NET framework I dont have it and I dont need it because I dont use the ATI Catalyst Control Center anyway...instead I use Omegas...and I dont develop .NET apps so you can remove it without any qualms if you want...but first make sure you dont have apps that need the framework.

Sorry mate never heard of it. I will be on the lookout and let you know if I get something substantial though.

I believe if you go here... http://www.pctools.com/registry-mechanic/i...w/registry-fix/ you can find a tweak that does that for you. It is just a matter of hacking around some of the registry values. Also I am curious while we are in the command prompt thread if it is possible to not display the entire directory path of the present working directory and just show the name of only the directory in the command prompt. For example suppose you are in C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_02\bin and so all you would want to see in your cmd prompt instead of the whole path would be C;\$bin or something like that so it does not take up so much of the dos window space. Thanks in advance.

Yes it is just as I suspected...as mentioned in one of the articles of getting XP with SP1 down to a size of 185 mb was just the install size and not the size of the windows install after all is siad and done. If I am wrong please feel free to correct me as I am quite curious about this.

The sizes that you guys are mentioning of the XP install...are they the numbers that are indicatng the amount of hard drive space used up after install or the install cd itself? Cause I got my Dell OEM CD to go down to around 130 mb with SP2 slipstreamed from a previous size of 550 mb with SP1a. However after it installs onto the hdd, the windows installation directory does go up to around 1.9 gb. Crazy how a 130 mb image can go up to 1.9 gb....

Get spy doctor and get spybot and update their definitions. Then scan the box and see if you have any spyware. My girlfriend's laptop was having the same problem right after it gets done booting up and then that error message would show up. After I scanned and removed the spyware, everything went back to normal and there was no more occurences. Hope that helps buddy.

I dont know if this is a hack or not, but if you frequently reinstall isnt there a way of saving this one particular file and that retains the install and activation info so you dont have to call MS?

I think what Jeremy was trying to say that besides other tools, nLite does removal of services as well. I donnt know if he was trying to hijack anything Yzowl. Thanks for the heads up on those tools btw for removing services.

Well I got it working. Though not on the Dell OEM CD though. I had a copy of XP Home and I slipstreamed SP2 and some hotfixes in it no problem. I even tweaked the install added hotfixes and added information for an unattended install and it worked like a charm. My original XP CD was 550 mb and my current XP install cd is around 139 mb. Quiet a drop. Originally installing XP was a long drawn out affair and now the longest thing in the install is the process of reformatting the disk!!! nLite worked like a charm. I dont have a lot of the crap that XP originally came bundled with. If I remember correctyly, the XP install took up around 1.9 gb of my hdd space after tweak. Previously it was around 2.5 gb so I saved 600 mb of bloatware not to mention countless security loopholes being avoided. I am very happy with my install right now. The process is extremely easy. I too burned and damaged a few good cds beforegetting a version that just works and rocks!! Thanks all.

Well I have another copy of XP which does need to be activated after install and so I was going to give it another shot. THis is a non OEM CD and is a direct purchase from MS. So if you guys have any tips as to what options to select, what drivers and so on that would be great.

Sorry about the monolithic post. Hope that is more legible. Thanks in advance for all future helpful posts.