Files in the SYSTEM directory

[fdv]

My apologies if this is already known.

All of those files in your SYSTEM (not system32) directory? They can be deleted. I didn't know this until recently when I was experimenting with NT 4. In fact this directory doesn't even need to exist.

Open TXTSETUP.INF

Find [Files.UpgradeWin31]

Every file listed under this section can be deleted

In the main [sourceDisksFiles] section, all files with a ,5, (that's a comma five comma) should be removed because they are assigned to directory #5, the SYSTEM directory. For example, in Windows 2000, that would be the following two useless files:

setup16.inf = 1,,,,,,,5,3,2,setup.inf

stdole.tlb = 1,,,,,,,5,0,0

I also found, but see Gosh has beat me to it, that commenting out drivers under [sCSI.Load] can make setup appreciably faster. Use cautiously however since VMWare "tells" the OS that certain devices are present that really aren't. For example, you could comment out the cpqarry2 = cpqarry2.sys,4 line because chances are you're never even going to find a Compaq computer that still has the custom Compaq SCSI Array, which was hardware included in Compaq servers a long, long time ago.