Next steps to slimmest, most efficient install

[patwa]

Hello,

It's been about 18 months since I dabbled with unattended installs, the one I did then has worked since without a hitch but now it's time for the system to have a clean up, format and re-install. Unfortunately I don't have the image which I made then, and in any case I could probably do better anyway so I'm back to working from scratch.

At this point I'd like to thank all the people who have contributed to making this possible, the work and research which you have put into it, not to mention setting aside the time is awesome, and very much appreciated.

That having been said, I'm a bit unsure where to start. I've of course run nLite on a retail XP Pro SP2 CD, but now am unsure about just which route to take to slim down the install further. I'm after more space on the CD, but also after a faster install time (the last one was 9 minutes start to finish + about 5 mins for applications).

I have read many posts about people installing the full retail windows, then slimming it down, but unfortunately I don't have a spare system to play with to do that, so I'm trying to slim down the install CD, then put my apps on and then run that as the setup.

I would appreciate tips on what steps to follow next. I've seen lists of files that are safe to remove (actually it was the list of the Windows\System32 folder but I could probably find the files on the CD) , should I go that way and remove them or is there a safer and more efficient way to do the strip down?

Of course, no project is worthwile without a clear purpose (sorry, the software developer in me talking here), so here goes. The overall goal is a stable and functional system with the best possible performance, by removin all components that could slow it down. I'm happy to install applications to replace components not installed (for example, I'll install Photoshop instead of paint, Windows Live instead of Windows Messenger, and so on). The particular system I'm doing this for connects via Ethernet to a router, so no wireless functionality is needed. It also doesn't have any TV card or firewire utilities. It's mainly a work and surf machine, not a gamer, although it does have an AGP graphics card. I would also be putting IE7 in, although this could be slipstreamed or installed post-setup.

I would appreciate some direction here, my session.ini is included from nlite for reference.

Thanks.

H.

Last_Session.ini