OK so I want to make a "live rescue CD" where you can boot into Windows XP as a live environment. I want to make this as small as possible so I will strip most stuff out with nLite but whats confusing me is - for example if I remove "Thinkpad" does that mean the live CD would not be able to load itself on a Thinkpad laptop?

Likewise if you want firewire in the live OS - does it all work the exact same way as it would if you were actually making an installable disc? The stuff in your system you want working is all the stuff you need to keep?

Because its a live rescuse environment, I am removing all the stuff I wouldn't usually dream of removing like sound drivers, DirectX, OpenGL, none of which would be needed in a live environment, its only going to be used to access my system whilst its "offline" really.

Just wondered what sort of rules to follow... like if I remove Printer Support then there would be no printer support in the live OS, right?

BartPE iso is already smaller than 200Meg. All that cannot be used is already removed (sound, printers...). There is not much to remove before, you might regret it afterwards. And it's not like it's taking place on your HDD.