How to strip XP ISO to > 200MB?

[pianoman6584]

Here's my situation:

I'm trying to install a light version of XP on my laptop. The laptop has only a 20GB HDD so space is crucial (especially since I use a 15GB program).

I have (but did not make) a 112MB ISO for XP which has successfully installed through VirtualBox (don't ask me how or where please), so I know it's moderately functional. I can't use it because my laptop doesn't have an optical drive and I've had no luck installing over USB, so I boot into WinPE via network and manually install through the console.

Since this requires winnt32.exe, I'm going to have to make my own ISO in order to achieve the same results. I tried using the last session file from the 112MB ISO but the resulting ISO was still around 480MB. It seems as if SOME of the files were removed but many were left intact (and yes I unchecked the dependency box).

How could I slim down the ISO to under 200MB, with or without nLite?

[Kelsenellenelvian]

What is the source you are using now?

Official? SP1, SP2 , SP3? Clean and unmodified to start with?

[pianoman6584]

Nevermind, I found some presets by googling which came close to the results I wanted. I also figured out that you CAN create a virtual CD (even recognizable by the BIOS as an optical drive!) out of a USB stick.

Here's where I found the info:

http://blog.usboffice.kr/?p=146