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Reality Check on reducing sources(size) Win 7


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Let me give you a reality check

I see many posts on reducing sources so here's my thoughts. Ya got spoiled by the *Lite things but that was XP with 750+ .inf files

I can remove some stuff plus sources cause I been testing the waters. I remove the modules from my Se7en_UA App before I release.

Looked at removing TabletPC but thats 147 manifest files plus other things roughly on a 64 bit for 18Mb source reduction.

Thats not a lot considering there are 12,893 of them manifest files and you can't leave no stone unturned.

Ok so I removed NaturalLanguage since its around 4 files I process on a 64 bit and it actually reduced 583 MB from my Mount Dir and I ran it a week or so before redone testing something.

Before 2.66 GB (2,860,843,008 bytes)

After 2.67 GB (2,875,248,640 bytes)

Yep size of wim increased on that one.

Now if I Extract only my (1) Ultimate image things change a little bit.

Before 2.66 GB (2,860,843,008 bytes)

After 2.58 GB (2,774,642,688 bytes)

But I reduced it by the 100mb with only 1 image extraction as shown already in another post.

Perhaps we just don't have the right cmd lines or whatever MS is doing yet since 7 is so new. When you install your 7 and before you do anything look at the size it takes up on the disk. Thats coming from a 2.66 GB install.wim image. :w00t:

Removing components because you don't want or don't think you'll need is one thing but trying to reduce size from a dvd install that can be done from a 20GB usb disk also is a whole new creature.

I'd almost bet that's why Nuhi said to heck with it. Too much headache for so little gain. I say that cause I haven't used the *Lite things since Vista was released. I don't know how much it actually reduces 7 but I didn't use cause the problems. I want my PC to run.........

Besides 7 run's so **** good I really don't want to tinker with them things, I'll just disable what I can, tweak the rest with Reg things and that way If I see I need it, I'll turn the mother back on.

Agree/Disagree or comments?

Edited by maxXPsoft
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I never really understood why you would want to remove stuff from your Windows install. I figured it was just a project that someone did to see if XP or Vista or whatever could run on the bare minimum, then it because its own monster. I could *maybe* see if people were trying to get stuff to fit on smaller media, but then I still remember that you can just get newer (bigger) media. With the size of hard drives, speed of CPUs, size of memory, etc, I do not see a reason for needing to remove things, to make the OS smaller, or run with less resources. Maybe that was a thing of the past and some people just got used to using it, same reason why we have such a large Windows 98 or Windows 2000 base here.

Just for fun, here are my image sizes :ph34r:

2.33GB Windows 7 Home Premium x86

3.00GB Windows 7 Home Premium x64

2.45GB Windows 7 Professional x86

3.10GB Windows 7 Professional x64

2.13GB Windows 7 Starter

6.10GB Vista Business x86

We don't really use Vista anymore, but we keep it around. We have XP images too but they are bigger than the Vista one. :blink:

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I do want to shrink the WIM file because I want WPI to start afterwards. My WPI is 2.3 GBs.......

3.3 and 2.3 makes 5.6 GB and a ISO file can be 4.0 GB at max.

I do have a USB stick of 8 GB. Is it possible to copy all the files to the USB stick and so make a "Image" of more then 5 GB? Or do I always have to do trough a "ISO" file?

I tried It ones but my problem is that when the system restarts, the Setup program will begin at once again with the Setup program and not goes further with the installation.

Thanks for the refreshing info above.

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Technically an ISO can be larger than 4GB if the software reading it can handle it, but of course physical media size is limited. If we're talking about Windows Vista or Windows 7 images, you don't even need an ISO - you just need a bootable USB key and the flat files copied to it for it to work (again, the machine booting the USB key must also be capable of booting from removable media, but most computers built in the last few years have this capability).

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DVD-9, holds around 8 540 000 000 bytes and that is 7.95 computer GB. DVD+R supports this format. Also called Single Sided Dual Layered. This media is called DVD-R9, DVD-R DL, DVD+R9, DVD+R DL or 8.5 GB Media.

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I don't care about reducing the WIM size (that happened as well - 1.5GB), but I did remove enough to fit nicely on my 4GB DDR SSD. (install occupies 3.6GB). This was using vLite and I only removed the big/useless stuff (languages, natural language, speech, offline-help, media samples). The WIM only contains a single image if that makes a difference.

That can be further reduced by using the Autounattend.xml "servicing" section to prevent installation of other items that vLite cannot remove properly. (not reducing WIM, but reducing install bloat). HINT: Use WSIM to create these settings, this is just a small sample of what it can do.

    <servicing>
<package action="configure">
<assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft-Windows-Foundation-Package" version="6.1.7600.16385" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="" />
<selection name="MediaPlayback" state="false" />
<selection name="InboxGames" state="false" />
<selection name="WindowsGadgetPlatform" state="false" />
<selection name="TabletPCOC" state="false" />
<selection name="Internet-Explorer-Optional-x86" state="false" />
<selection name="MSRDC-Infrastructure" state="false" />
<selection name="SearchEngine-Client-Package" state="false" />
<selection name="Xps-Foundation-Xps-Viewer" state="false" />
<selection name="NetFx3" state="false" />
</package>
<package action="configure">
<assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft-Windows-LocalPack-AU-Package" version="6.1.7600.16385" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="" />
<selection name="LocalPack-AU" state="false" />
</package>
<package action="configure">
<assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft-Windows-LocalPack-CA-Package" version="6.1.7600.16385" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="" />
<selection name="LocalPack-CA" state="false" />
</package>
<package action="configure">
<assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft-Windows-LocalPack-GB-Package" version="6.1.7600.16385" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="" />
<selection name="LocalPack-GB" state="false" />
</package>
<package action="configure">
<assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft-Windows-LocalPack-ZA-Package" version="6.1.7600.16385" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="" />
<selection name="LocalPack-ZA" state="false" />
</package>
<package action="configure">
<assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft-Windows-UltimateEdition" version="6.1.7600.16385" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="" />
<selection name="Microsoft-Hyper-V-Common-Drivers" state="false" />
<selection name="Microsoft-Hyper-V-Guest-Integration-Drivers" state="false" />
<selection name="Microsoft-Windows-Printing-XPSServices-Package" state="false" />
<selection name="OpticalMediaDisc" state="false" />
</package>
</servicing>

Edited by MrJinje
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for me when i use software of this nature; be it nlite, vlite or 7customizer it has always been to integrate drivers, updates and service packs and remove stuff i did not want like security center, windows defender and things like that. the size of the ISO doesn't matter to me. of course i have not moved to SSD either :)

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Looked around and realized I still had the Cd sources from Vista.Xtreem1.01 which was a Vista image reduced to 373 MB by Clint. It ran but looked like win 95 on steroids. The possibilities are there.

MrJinje,

Yes I used to use that with Vista, may need to go back to it. Features are not disabling using my current methods with Dism. Said it does in the cmd box but not so. Just haven't had time yet to look into that more.

Edited by maxXPsoft
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Also we must remember that some users do not have the same resources that we may have. For example, my WIMs for 7 are just the OS and drivers. I have a custom program that is run after imaging where you can select what programs you want to install. Of course if you choose, say Nero and Office, that's almost 1GB of stuff right there. But in my case, these files are kept on a network server. A bunch of people here are limited to using USB Keys or DVDs and don't have servers to install Windows with, and this is a reason why file size becomes an issue.

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I use Mr Jinje DISM Tool to slipstream drivers, disable features from loading installed (ie: games, indexing, M$ search 4.0-really hate that one-use a nifty app called File Menu Tools for search http://www.lopesoft.com/en/fmtools/info.html), George King's Windows 7 Update Pack Tool v1.3.4.0 http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/10571-Windows-7-RTM-Updates-Packs-x86-amp-x64 to slipstream hotfixes/updates (using his latest update pack) and find my installs to be efficient, fast and stable.thumbup.gif

I agree that reducing size is really not a viable option anymore, although, I wish one could completely remove Windows Defender from the source without adverse side effectssmile.gif

My runonce is quite loaded; this combined with the update pack (which is huge) all seem to always fit quite nicely on a standard DVD-so far anyways. I have an 8G USB flash drive, but, so far have not needed it.

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