I've known different technicians at work remove the same things from their install cd's @work and get different results. That's why I never use nLite for reducing size of source. Its too unpredictable. Sorry if this upsets the nLite dev's but thats' our personal experience with it - we just use it as a slipstreaming tool. Some people might/will disagree with me but from past dodgy experiences I will not use nLite as a reducing tool. I use the original guide = http://unattended.msfn.org/xp/space_saving_tips.htm and manually del all the mentioned directories there and haven't had any issues from doing so, especially the prob you are experiencing. nLite V0.99.4b2 M$ WinXP Pro (with no SP's applied, just "bare") M$ SP2 RyanVM pack full V104 P.S. For the same reasons - unpredictability - we also don't use VMware or VirtualPC for testing. Just a dedicated testbox. It just adds extra clutter to find what-went-wrong-where if issues arise. Rule 'em out from the word go. Well I & Heck of a lot of other forumers have been testing NLite for many months now & the only problems I have encountered are user errors not program ones!