suryad

Hey guys, I tried to use nLite and followed the directions and created an XP Install CD which was shrunk down to the size of around 220 MB from the original 520 MB. Well I was gonna do a fresh reinstall of my machine anyway now that the quarter is almost over and so I thought i would check out how my install worked. Well no surprise the install did not work because I would not be here asking for your advice if it did. I have an Inspiron XPS and so I have an OEM Dell CD with SP1a included in it. When I reinstalled the nLite version of the XP, it installed fine with no errors but then all of a sudden it started to ask me for the Windows Product Key which was quiet surprising considering that the install never asked me that previously and I thought that nLite recognized that there already existed an unattended install that was already provided by Dell. Anyway after booting into the now loaded up XP which took up around 1.92 GB of space, I thought of installing SP2 and when I tried to do that, SP2 ran but reported errors of not being able to find a particular inf file and a logagent.exe file or something like that. And so I doubt the SP2 install went correct even though the machine had Security Center and IIS and evyerhing running normally. Well to make a long story short here I am asking for advice. If someone could provie screenshots of all the options they selected and options they deselected that would be great! It would really help me a long way into having a non-resource hungry fast lite XP on my machine. Thanks I hope you guys are able to help this snoob (super noob) out.

Yep HT is pretty cool methinks. I read Intel plans on having 4 threads running at the same time on the new dual core EE coming out soon. Yikes..and I read that they will jump to 8 threads by the end of the decade but no higher since there are no performance increases given the architecture. So interesting stuff.

Wow didnt know SP2 includes SP1. So ahem..does that mean that XP with SP1a and then installing SP2 on top of it is a bad idea? Or would we rather be better off with xp sans sp1 and then just go to sp2 directly?

Haha Marsden you are kidding right? There are users with serious needs and serious systems who are gamers...hmm EVERYWHERE!! Why do you think there are all these hardware innovations? Faster CPUs, faster memory and faster GPUs...for us gamers. Not for workstation users. THey come lower in the food chain. This is the enthusiast market. Sure MS may not come out with a 64 bit Home version, no biggie I will use the Pro. All I was saying is choice is good. Chill Marsden. Dont take it so personally.

Marsden what you dont seem to get is there are a lot of people who are not installing pro 20k apps. That does not mean they should not be given the chance to choose 2 flavors of the 64 bit OS. I dont use mission critical apps and nor do I intend to on my home machine. If I want mission critical I will get Linux. If I want ease of use, and gaming, and something I am used to completely, i will use XP Home. Not Pro because I do not have a need for Pro. All I am saying is that MS should release a 64 bit Home Edition as well. I am sure there is a market for it. Like gamers for example.

VitoCorelone took the words right out of my mouth. And besides Pro only puts things in which very few people IMHO use. I could be completely wrong of course, but I think that leaving XP Home users out from upgrading to XP Home 64 bit would be a bad idea on the part of M$. Its not that we dont want to upgrade, we dont want Pro...with its added kludge...and not a lot of people know about nLite.

That is why I dont use XP Pro Marsden. But that does not mean I would not want to get a 64 bit version of the XP Home...if they are even coming out with such a flavor like that.

So you gotta have XP Pro for a swap and not XP Home?! THats kinda lame but then again its not too bad. I hate Pro anyways....too much crap that I will never use ever.

I am kind of confused there what do you mean you can upgrde for free? You cant be serious when you say that Bill is giving out free upgrades?!?! What is going on?

Hmm nLite very useful, I am going to try my new shrunk OS soon. Also www.blackviper.com as mentioned before along with www.theeldergeek.com, www.tweakxp.com and www.tweakguides.com. There is an excellent pdf file...huge with massive amounts of information on setting up the OS right. Also go to the command prompt and type in 'diskperf -n' which turns off disk performance counters or something like that and is supposed to give a bit of a speed boost. I have my page file set to 512 mb initial and final sizes and I have a gig of fast memory. Also MS bootvis is a helpful tool to speed up reboots. CrapCleaner and system mechanic 5.5 are very useful to keep the registry trim and light. I run them both once a week. What one program misses the other gets. Also Diskeeper 9 the latest build is a very nice software. I have it defrag automatically when my machine is not being used. Mac OS X does something of the sort so manual defragging is never required. Also I defrag the MFT and stuff once a month....Diskkeeper defrags during the reboot. There is an option that the program also lets u know of to increase the MFT table on your hdd if you are using it a lot. I fully dont understand it but I have noticed quiet a lot of performance increase from my hard drive after I set it to the recommended setting. The software Diskeeper does it all for you. Very nice. And thats about it. My machine runs brilliantly fast, no crashes, no slowdowns and no malware, virus free for over 6 months!! And this too on a full XP install and not an nLite enhanced install. Hope this was useful.

Well I had a 98se install on a p3 500 mhz with 40 gb hdd and 256 mb ram with a 64 mb geforce 2 vdo card. That was fast when it came out but kept crashing like crazy. So I put WinXP Sp2 in it and it is completely untweaked right now but dang that thing runs fast and stable. I was shocked that I was able to resuscitate that machine and make it run the way it runs now. My sister now uses that machine and loves it. I think XP was a better choice. And nLIte is a sweet tool to use with XP. Just get rid of all the driver crud on the OS install and install only the drivers you need and you are set. My 2 cents.

Will stick with XP for now. I will wait for Longhorn until I see that its stable, does not hog resources, nLite works on Longhorn because I think Longhorn will have a Longlistofcrudthatwewillneverneed to be uninstalled off of it. I am going to wait and see if apps run faster on Longhorn...I would prob swithc to XP 64 bit cause I have seen some very nice benchmarks at xbitlabs. My 2 cents

Lotsa thanks for the reply. But see being that I have an OEM Dell install, I do not think I will be able to slipstream SP2 into the install will I? I mean a lot of people have been reporting problems with Dell OEM cds.

Hi guys, first post. Brilliant forum. I just recently downloaded nLite and as I type I am running it so that the setup files of my cd are being copied onto the hdd. My question is that since my install is an OEM Dell cd with service pack 1a streamlined into it, so after I dump all the garbage that I do not want to install using nLite, and knowing full well that I will have to dowload SP2 to get the OS completely updated, isnt some garbage going to be installed along with SP2 that I will most likely never ever use? If thats the case, how am I to get rid of that stuff then because all nLite allows me to do is to modify an installation cd and not an install. Hope my question makes sense and lots of thanks in advance for future help.