Doctor Trout

I don't think you can install Windows XP Embedded on normal household computers.

When you say "I'm not sure if remove the followings components" I take it you mean you want to know whether you can remove these components. The thing is... it depends what you use your computer for. Obviously, almost every component in Windows does something (there are a few which don't), and consequently, if you use that functionality you'll have to keep it. For example: 9) Automatic Updates. Do you use Automatic updates? If you don't, then you can remove it, if you do, then you'll have to keep it. I don't keep many of those things you've mentioned here, and have no problems, but I haven't tested them with every single programme in existance. Your best bet is to make a disc, try it out (either in real life or on VMWare) and if you come across programmes that don't work for you, add the relevent components back in.

If you want to seriously reduce your Windows memory usage, I suggest logging on to Bold_Fortune's site: http://www.bold-fortune.com/forums/index.php?showforum=13 Using a combination of his guide and nLite I have a copy of Windows XP (SP2) installed on my computer, complete with Office 2003 (Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Publisher) taking up just under 600 MB. Plenty of space on a 4 Gig drive. The first main area to go to is the i386 folder, and any other folders than contain backup of install files.

I've got the impression that Bold doesn't plan to start another forum - in fact, from what he's said, I don't think he wanted that one in the first place.

Hey Zxian, Sorry for jumping down your throat there. I just get a bit fed up with people either complaining about Bold_Fortune or nLite or whatever. I mean, especially with something like this, it's a choice whether you use it or not, and if you don't want to fiddle with your system, then don't follow a guide all about fiddling with your system. This, I think is the point - it does take a long time, and you will have to tinker with your system for hours. But, really, that's what his website was about. Tinkering with your system and discovering new things. To be honest, though, isn't that what this site is about as well? I can't help but notice there are forums here about "customizing" and "tweaking" Windows. I mean, as a general rule, the only reason you write on a messageboard dedicated to altering software in your computer is because you like tinkering around with your system. I, personally, use a combination of nLite and Bold's guide. Like you, I've had my fair share of things breaking, but, really, if you don't like things not working you shouldn't use computers. Using this guide I have learnt more about computers (and my computer in particular) than through anything else. On the other hand, if you're not someone who wants to use nLite, who doesn't want to remove anything from their OS, then removing files Bold suggests isn't going to interest you. You'd be amazed at how often people on Bold's forum were able to very precisely and accurately pinpoint problems users had. By knowing what files do, you can pinpoint the source of a problem and solve it directly, which is usually a much neater solution. I mean, I do think it is a good practice (in life as well as just with computers) to understand what things do. I can't think of a situation when more knowledge and a greater understanding is a bad thing. As you say, it is a lot of work - and I would never have gone through and examined what every file in Windows XP does. But, now Bold has done it, he has provided a resource which is fascinating and incredibly useful, often when you don't suspect it. It's a fantastic resource for troubleshooting, and there's nothing else which provides such focused information on the Internet. It may well help with conflicts and dependencies. Um - I don't know if that's the point. I'm not sure if anything I do to my computer will make me work faster (or even if I want to work faster). I do know that since fiddling with my computer and following many of Bold's insights and tips my COMPUTER works faster. I doubt it. Will changing your desktop background do either of those things either? Not everything in this world increases your wealth or moral worth (sadly). I'm sorry about that, but your question was: Bearing in mind that Bold's site is a forum discussing computers (very much like this one), and both dirtwarrior and I are semi-regular posters on the forum the reason we wanted to "find" his site seems quite obvious to me. Your question seemed more a rhetorical point. Are you saying you actually wanted to know why we wanted to post on his forum again? The answer, presumably, is the same reason that you (and the hundreds of other members here) like to post on this forum - because they like to, and are interested in what it is about. They don't need to give a financial or moral justifcation for doing so. Well, it's probably best not to use i) nLite ii) Windows iii) a computer then. No, I can't either. Partly because they would both invalidate any licence from Microsoft. But also, a corporation doesn't care about the thousands of computers they have in the same way an individual may care about his one computer. That's not the only reason you may need it. In addition, files can often become deleted by accident, other programmes can delete them, they can become corrupted etc. There are also sorts of reasons why it could be useful to see an organised and methodical analysis of your computer's system files. Anyway, I'm not going to try to persuade you to read it. If you're interested in it, you'll read it and like it, if you're not you won't. My point, really, is I think it's a fantastic resource, and clearly a lot of work has been put into it. It encourages you to think about your system, fiddle with it and tweak it. If you don't like doing that, then just don't bother with it. There's no need for people to keep moaning about it. I'll be honest, I don't really understand what the problem is between Bold and this site, but he seems to refuse to post here now (as do some other people on his site). I don't follow this feud as I'm a bit of a new-comer. However, I find both this site and his site fascinating and fantastic sources of information. I find it a bit dissapointing/annoying that some of the members of this forum and his forum seem to be at war with each other, because I think they both have a lot to give/discuss with each other. But, anyway, I'm not brokering a peace treaty or anything, and I'm sure you're not part of the "Bold-hating" community - you're last post just seemed a bit aggresive and off-topic - considering the thread was about why his forum had gone down and whether it would be coming back, it seemed a bit irrelevent to start commenting about his methods etc. BACK ON TOPIC: Incidentally, as regards his forum, at the moment Bold does not know what has happened, has had no communication from the host and doesn't believe the forum will be coming back. He also has no plans to start a new forum. The current situation is that he has moved to another forum that contains a mirror of his guide.

I disagree. 1) You say that as if everyone else loves it if you continually argue with them 2) I suspect the point probably was that after you've spent a number of years writing a several hundred thousand page guide, offering detailed information about thousands of files, it's a bit annoying when some jumped up code kiddy just says "use nLite". Especially when he wasn't even suggesting the two as alternatives. 3) By "his methods" do you mean "deleting files?" - I suspect that's quite a standard "method" of removing files. 4) Or maybe by "his methods" you mean the way he went through the problem slowly and methodically trying to work out exactly what was wrong and come up with a solution that fixed exactly that problem rather than just "reinstalling windows", "reinstalling drivers" etc. This is a stupid question. 1) I don't necessarily regard "unorthodox" as a bad thing. You could say that nLite is pretty "unorthodox". 2) I also don't see why that would be a reason to dislike someone. 3) If they work, the actual orrthodoxy of methods, particularly when it comes to computers, is irrelevent. 1) That implies he is somehow doing it to make money. This was not the case. Nor was he offering a "method" or a "guide" that could be followed, he was analysing files, finding out what they did and which ones could be safely removed, or had to be kept to run programems 2) I disagree that an almost one click pre-install, file removal programme has "put... out of business" a huge guide which, as I've said, provided significant details on hundreds of files. Even if you didn't want to remove files, Bold's guide provided detailed information about the entire windows operating system. It was amazingly useful for diagnosing problems and for running Windows cleanly and simply. I've learnt more tips and tricks from that forum that anywhere else. Oh, also, in regards to your above comments about Bold_Fortune:

It's all a mystery to me. It's a 500 Internal Server Error, though, so it's something at his end, I think.

I was wondering, does anyone reckon there's a way of altering the Common Tasks panel in Windows XP - I mean, changing the text, the functions, and adding and removing items on it. I assume all of the strings are stored in shell32.dll somwhere, but I'm not good enough at reshacking to work out how to change the action. I mean, for example in the String Table section in 1956 are a few commands. STRINGTABLE LANGUAGE LANG_ENGLISH, SUBLANG_ENGLISH_US { 31280, "Plays all or the selected music files in this folder." 31281, "Shop for music online" 31282, "Connects you to the Windows Media Web site where you can find music to download and buy." 31283, "Picture Tasks" 31284, "These tasks apply to the picture files and folders you select." 31285, "Get pictures from camera or scanner" 31286, "Transfers pictures from a camera or scanner to your computer." 31287, "View as a slide show" 31288, "Arranges all the pictures in this folder into a slide show." 31289, "Set as desktop background" 31290, "Uses the selected picture, pattern, or HTML document as the background for your computer screen." 31291, "These tasks apply to your computer or the selected hardware device." 31292, "Search for files or folders" 31293, "The Search Companion helps you find files, folders, printers, and people." 31294, "View system information" 31295, "Shows information about your computer, such as the processor speed and the amount of installed memory." } So presumably I could edit the text or remove it entirely - but how would I change the action? I mean, take "Shop for Music Online"; what does the "31281" refer to? I'm assuming here that the best way to do this is through reshacking. I mean, I notice the text is also referred to in the registry at: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\MUICache] I didn't know if anyone else had tried this, or knew where to point me in the right direction.

Does anyone have an idea how to get rid of the HUGE advertisement banner on the left that, on mine, is currently proudly proclaiming "Windows Live"? I mean, it takes up about a third of the screen... Also, it doesn't seem very customisable... I mean, how do I add or remove buttons to the top vertical bar? Maybe that's just beta software for you...

I've been trying to reghack some windows files to change icons. At the moment I'm trying to swap my recycle bin icon for a new one. Anywya, I've been through shell32.dll and swapped all the recycle bin icons for my new one. But, it still isn't working? Is there something else I need to swap? Or do I need to delete iconcache.db in C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Local Settings\Application Data to make it regenerate or something? Also, while I'm here, I was wondering - why on earth are the icons stored so many times in the dll files? I mean, take the background for the shut down button. That' stored in msgina.dll twice and shell32.dll twice as well. Why isn't it only there once? Do we have to keep all these multiple resources? I've always replaced all of them, but, would it be possible to remove some of them, and, if so, which ones?

txtsetup.sif can only copy files to your System Directory - to copy files to Program Files (where most WMP files go), you have to set up the instructions to do that in an inf file elsewhere, I believe (WMP.inf WMP10.inf et cetera). You could always download RyanVM's WMP10 update pack and have a look at that (or even use his yourself). I've tried to so something like this, but I've ended up repeatedly running into a brickwall over it.

I have a laptop which I never network or use for the Internet. My disc has Office 2003 (well, I say Office, it's actually just Word) added into it with a couple of other programmes. My aim is to fit my install size down to 210 megs, so that I can fit it onto a mini-CD. Currently, I've used nLite and Office Shrink, and my install is sitting at about 225 megs. So, I've got to loose about 15 megs. I'm having to manually remove files now, because I think nLite has done about as much as it can. However, one thing I'm trying to do, which may save me some much needed megs is remove all the networking components. I've removed a few, but netshell.dll is causing me problems. I believe this is pretty much the heart of windows networking, but if I remove it, and remove entries from TXTSETUP.sif, layout.inf, and DOSNET.inf I still get an error during setup saying it cannot continue because it cannot register netshell.dll. Is something else calling Netshell.dll to be installed, and what would that be? In addition, is there an easier way to set all networking components not to be installed, and remove them from the disc? And does anyone know which other files I need to remove? I'm assuming here that there is another file that is calling netshell.dll, but I'm stumped as to which one.

Hi guys, I have a quick question about installing Office automatically. I've created my MST file, and I've got the command: @echo off setup.exe TRANSFORMS=Office.MST /qb- to install Office. If I put this in a cmd or bat file and run it, Office will install perfectly. However, I now want to compress my Office install. I've zipped it up. Now, I know that isn't the best compresion compared to 7z for example, but I wanted to save myself from adding extra files to my install, and zip makes my file perfectly small enough. Anyway, my question is, how do I set my install to extract the files and install Office? I also don't want the setup files left on my system. Is this possible? I'm sure this is explained somewhere, but I'm d@mn3d if I can find it anywhere. Thanks a lot guys.

I've actually already tried that - I was looking for another way to Shrink Office further. In actual fact, Office Shrink only removes files from the Office source that aren't installed (when a particular transform file is used). I'm looking for a way to further remove files - another example (aside from the Publisher one) are the *.chm files. Even with all help files selected to be not installed via a transform file, a number are still installed. These can be deleted post-install with no damage to the install, however, they cannot be deleted pre-install. If they're not found, Office refuses to install.

Actually, sorry about that, I think it may have been one of my reg tweaks that broke it not nLite at all - reinstalled, and everything was back to normal.

I haven't removed IE6. I'm getting the error when I right click ANY file and click "open with". All my files open fine, unless I right click and click "open with" to open them with a program that isn't the default application. I'm going to have a play in control panel. But this is a bit weird. EDIT: Um, just thought I'd say my problem a bit more clearly - I can't open the "open with..." dialog box, basically.

I've just made another nLite disc. I've never really had any problems before, but this time, whenever I click "open with", I receive this error: "This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the Folder Options control panel." I'm not sure what it is I've done to do this. Has anyone come across this before? Does anyone have any ideas what could cause this, or how to put it right?

@ Echolomax That's a pretty funky wallpaper - where can I find it? Actually, speaking of good wallpapers: @ Daeron Tinúviel - where could I grab a copy of your wallpaper as well?

<<No extra resources are used for extra even if empty folders.>> Well, this is true, but I don't want those empty folders to be created - I thought about adding a cmd to delete them, but then I thought it would be neater and quicker for them not to be created at all in the first place. I'll have a play and see what happens.

Layout.inf? Or are there others as well as that.

Hey hey, I've been using nLite on my disc, which is all very nice. However, now I want to go a bit further than nLite. Specifically - there are a few other files I want to delete, and, also, I want to delete (or stop creating) a number of empty folders across my install. So, I've moved to the file TXTSETUP.SIF, which I believe will provide me with my solution. I've fired up TXTSETUP.SIF, and I've found this code: Right - now, I don't want, for example, the help file to be created (I've deleted all the help files with nLite). So, can I just delete the line 21 = help entirely, and will that stop that folder being created? Secondly, I also found these lines near the beginning I've deleted the cmpnents sub folder, and also the lang folder which is mentioned further down - so I can I remove these keys - and, likewise, the section headed off "[sourceDisksNames.amd64]" - I don't have an AMD processor, so can this go? I know I've asked a lot of questions there, but I've never really seen much information about TXTSETUP.SIF. If somebody can't be bothered to answer them, but wants to point me in the direction of information about it, I'll be tootling along. Thanks a lot.

So I should fire up nLite, add the update pack, when that's finished close it, then fire up nLite again, and then remove components? Well... you learn something every day! I've never done that...

Hey guys. I always used to use RyanVM's update pack, then I switched to Xable's lite pack when I started trying to reduce my OS. However, it occured to me, does it really matter which one I use? I know the difference - that Xable's only installs high priority, and Ryan's installs all the updates - but I'm not really sure how the update process works. I mean, say, for example I remove component X. Component X consists of xyz.dll - therefore xyz.dll is removed from my system. Then say, for example that Microsoft updates xyz.dll and, so, the update of xyz.dll is included in Xable's update pack. When the update pack is added to my install in nLite, does nLite realise that I have removed xyz.dll and so not add that file to my disc from the update pack? I mean, if that's the case, I don't see why I'd want to use Xable's pack as opposed to Ryan's? I mean, neither pack would add anything else to my disc, they'd just replace existing files with new versions? Am I right in thinking that, or have I misunderstood the process slightly?

<<-also, this is nothing to do with nlite!>> Whoops - sorry about that. I was thinking that the OEM folder thing only worked with nLite - not an expert on unattended CDs, as you may have guessed! Thanks a lot for your help there (feel free, mods, to move this to the unattended section). <<what you could do is compress your program files folders with 7zip to make a 7z file, then use command line 7zip (7za.exe) during cmdlines or whenever to uncompress the file to program files.. >> Yeah, that sounds just the kind of thing I want to do! Does that take a long time to uncompress and copy, or is it fairly quick? I guess it depends on size and compression, but, I mean, say 100 megs compressed at ultra compression, is that going to take a couple of minutes, or longer? I'm also going to have to ask you - how do I write a command to unextract files from a 7zip file? I'm guessing I compress all my files that I want in Program Files into 1 7zip file and put that in $OEM$/$Progs (I'm assuming it would be better to compress all the files in one file, rather than all seperately). Then I put 7za.exe in $OEM$ with cmdlines.txt and then write the command in cmdlines.txt? But, sorry, you're going to have to help me with what to write - I'm not very good at these command things yet... Thanks a lot.

Right, just to check that I've got this right, if I put something in the $OEM$/$Progs folder, it'll be copied to the Program Files folder during install, yeah? Okay, next question, can I compress the files I put there? Or if I do, do I have to specify that I want them to be uncompressed during install? Also, where would I put shortcuts to be added to the start menu? Or is that not possible? And, last question, how would I add some shortcuts to the sendto folder? Sorry for the flood of questions. Thanks.