Doctor Trout

Hey guys, I've been using Office Shrink (well, eventually I managed to use it), and I think I've shrunk my Office source down to 120 megs (I think I have anyway), it's taken a while - it hasn't worked on a fresh install with nothing else installed at all. I'm not complaining (well, okay I am). It's good software, but very temperamental. But, anyway, eventually, I got it to work, and I now have my shrunk down Office. However, there are still a number of files that Office installs that I don't want. I can't set the MST file not to install them, so I reckon I'll have to remove them another way. I'll give an example: PUB60.CTG (it's about 14 megs in size which is over 10% of the whole install) and contains publisher templates which I never ever use. I can delete it post install with no trouble (it's often difficult to delete Office files, because Office detects that they're gone and reinstalls them, or pops up the "locate source" window, however I can delete this one without problems). However, if I delete it in the source, Office installer detects that it's gone, and refuses to go on. All of the files that Office wants to install are stored inside Pro11.msi (which connects the files to install with the component that they comprise). So, I assume the only way to delete this (and other) files from the source would be to delete their reference from Pro11.msi. However, I have no idea how to edit the msi file. Has anyone tried this? Can anyone give me any help with this, or does anyone have a different way of further reducing the size of Office? Thanks.

SysInternals "Autoruns" will let you disable a number of options that load at startup (you'll be surprised at what it finds). One option is to stop explorer.exe loading at startup. Link: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Autoruns.html Hope that helps.

Fantastic - I'd nearly given up on finding a way to do this. Cheers a lot mate.

Hey guys, I've recently been trying to design an internet explorer toolbar. My original intention wasn't to code it at all, but to use Toolbar Studio (don't know if any of you have heard of it or used it - probably not). However, I don't think I'm going to be able to use Toolbar Studio, and I'm going to have to code it by hand instead. Anyway, I'll tell you what my plan is/was: I wanted to make a toolbar that would replace the Internet Explorer Address bar - but with added features. I've included a picture of how I want it to work (the picture is slightly touched up with paint, because it doesn't actually work like this at the moment). Link to picture: http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y142/Dr_Trout/toolbar-1.jpg Essentially, I primarily want it to work as an address bar - when you click "go" or press "enter" it loads the page you've typed in the address bar. However, when you click on the drop down menu (as pictured) a list of search engines appears, and if you click one of them, the term entered in the address bar will be searched for. Essentially, it is combining the features in IE7 or the Google Toolbar into one search bar, so you only need one text bar, rather than two. Ideally, I'd also like to add a "customize..." button, so that other search engines can be added, but I think that's a bit out of my league (although if anyone wants to help me...). I reckon I'm probably going to have to start again from scratch. However, there are a few aspects of the toolbar that I have no idea how to create. i) How to create a search box that acts like the address bar - ie will display the URL of the currently open page. ii) How to create a search box that shrinks and stretches to fit the alloted space (my current one is a fixed width) The other thing is, I suppose I'm going to have to rewrite the code from scratch now. I know HTML and a bit of javascript, but coding is a bit new to me (although I'm willing to try). So, that leaves me to ask a couple more questions: 1) I suppose it's not possible to edit the dll file that Toolbar Studio made to manually make these adjustments. 2) Would it be possible to copy the code from the actual internet explorer address bar from somewhere in Windows, and add to that? (you see - I really don't know much about this). 3) What coding language would be the best to make this work? I've been looking at things like this: http://www.vbaccelerator.com/home/vb/Code/...bar/article.asp and I'm thinking visual basic. I hope I haven't asked too many questions here. Please just chip in and point me in the right direction if anyone has any ideas on this.

Hey guys I was wondering, does anyone know of a way to add the "open with..." option to folder context menus? Thanks a lot in advance.

Hey guys, I'm sorry if this is a really easy/difficult question, or one that's been asked before, but I was wondering, is it possible to make a Windows 2000 install that looks like Windows XP - I mean with the ol' green start bar, and the general Windows XP theme and appearance? I suppose it would be possible running third party software, but is it possible to integrate the components directly from Windows XP, so you don't have to run anything else?

That's a bit vague. However, I assume you mean RyanVM's pack, and Xable's pack (although there is a third, the WUzero update pack). Anyway, the difference is this: RyanVM's pack contains all updates. Xable's lite pack contains only high prioritiy updates, so it's your choice whether you want to keep your install lite, or include all the updates. Hope that answers your question.

Righto. Thanks a lot. Don't think I really get how that works, but still - if it works, that's that.

Hey guys, I was going to intergrate my Sound Card drivers into my install, but when I pulled apart the .exe file for the Realtek drivers, I found 53 inf files. Presumably, they're all for different SoundCards, but how do I work out which one is the one that refers to my card? Thanks a lot in advance for any guidance anyone can offer.

I second rado354's comments. A folder removal feature would be useful. There's a feature to remove individual files from System32 but not folders. It would be really nice if there was an option to remove folders - such as the ones rado354 listed, and a number of others (maybe the user could select which ones to remove). One of the first things I do after installing is to remove a number of empty, annoying and useless folders from Program Files, Windows and System32. Also, what about an option to specify the swap-file size?

Dang. That's annoying.

Hi guys, I always used to use the Alternative to the Net Framework runtimes, because they saved installing so much crap. However, on my latest copy of windows the alternative runtimes aren't working, and are giving me a net framework error when I try to run nLite. Is this a known problem? Does anyone know what the problem might be, or better yet, how to fix it?

With my drivers, when I run the exe it extracts them before installing them - allI have to do is grab that extracted folder. If that doesn't work for you, you could try universal extractor: http://www.legroom.net/modules.php?op=modl...;app=uniextract it can often extract the files in an exe.

Oh yeah, I always knew it would be quicker for that very reason, but I was just wondering how much quicker. Are you saying that you can't do it from the hard drive if you nLite it? Is that with the floppy disk trick, or with the boot.ini trick?

Is this quicker than installing from a disc? Presumably it is - how much quicker is it?

How would you go about adding a button like this one that ran a specific programme? Thanks.

Nice tip. I have a question though - Is there a way to create folders as menus rather than links. If you see what I mean. Add a folder to the menu so that when clicked on, instead of opening an explorer window, it has a black arrow beside it and loads a menu showing the contents of that folder?

Dial up speeds depend on various factors outside of your control, such as the quality of the phone cable outside your house. The best advice, is to plug your internet cable into the main socket in your house, and minimize the length of phone cable. You'll never get more than about 6kb/s though.

1500 Megs - only 128 megs of it are being used.

Loads and loads. Although, strangely, I opened a smaller publisher document, just now, which opened fine. I can't believe it's a ram problem though. I have a gig of ram, and I'm not really using any much. It's about 80% free... Virtual Memory is pretty free as well. A gig of it, and 158 megs are being used.

Hey guys, Whenever I try and open files in Publisher 2003 I get this error: "Windows is Low on Memory. Save you work and close other programs before you continue working". I don't have NAV installed, so it's not that (an error, which the MS KB suggests). Any other ideas? I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling Publisher, but that hasn't helped... I'm a bit stumped now. Thanks a lot.

Hey guys, as usual, sorry if this is a really stupid question that's been asked a lot before. I was looking through the txtsetup.sif file from my nLitened CD, and I noticed that, even though I've selected all the sounds to be removed XPBalln = "Windows XP Balloon.wav" etc... Are still there. Should I delete all these references? Also, there are a number of folders I always delete in System32 and Windows (following Bold_Fortune's advice) and I've noticed that a number of them are mentioned under the section [WinntDirectories]. If, for example, I delete: 24 = msagent\intl 25 = Cursors 26 = Media 27 = java 28 = java\classes 29 = java\trustlib Will these folders then not be created? That would save me some time later on when I go to delete them... Is that all there is to it, or is it more complicated than that... it usually is. Thanks a lot.

Hey guys, Now, I know that TweakUI lets you set personalised actions for a number of command keys, (you know, the extra buttons on your keyboard at the top). However, I have some on my keyboard that aren't in TweakUI and that Tweak UI doesn't seem to recognise... so, the question is, how do I personalise them? I was looking through the registry and I found this: HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/App Key and this seems to be where the TweakUI customised ones are stored. However, each key has a number - and I don't know what the numbers are for the keys I want to customise (nor how I'd find them). I don't even know if this is the right way to go about customising the command keys. Does anyone know how? Thanks a lot

Really, you just have to google the KB number for the hotfix to find it. Here's one at random: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en

I was wondering... does anyone know a good way of limiting the time it takes for a Windows 2000 Pro computer to display the message "Preparing Network Connections" at startup. I have a laptop. It's not connected to a network. It never will be. I've nLited the install to try to remove networking components. I have most services disabled. Essentially, I want to get rid of as many networking components as necessary, since I'll never use them. But, it still takes an uncomfortably long time to boot - usually waiting on the "Preparing Network Connections" message for a while. Can anyone think of anything else to disable that I might have missed? Or does anyone have a good fix for this - I know it's a common problem, but I haven't seen a common solution.