nLite - Windows reduction tool

[Weed]

hello,

a small question:

does nLite save the files hivesft.inf & sysoc.inf as ANSI ? or its not possible?

becuz other winxp languages then english save the files as ASCII, and if the files r saved as ASCII then removing apps dont work

look at this Post if u dont know what i mean

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=10497&st=300

4 the solution, look at titou2k´s Post

[MCT]

nLite has found its way 2 http://warp2search.net

http://warp2search.net/modules.php?name=Ne...ticle&sid=18241

[venim]

Well I have made my first nlited windows xp pro sp1 cd.

I can say everything is running smoothly..

Can't wait for a version that supports win2k3 ent.

A question.

If sb wants to remove ie (like I do) then is there any browser that can get updates from M$ ?

Congrats nuhi

[MCT]

@venim

ive heard removing IE can make some programs that use that not funtion correctly, and i was told removing it only saves about 2MB so its in theory not worth it, as it doesnt save much space, as for a browser that works with ms updates, anything that will allow activex and then u will probly manually have 2 set your User Agent

Edit: like i stated above, i dont remove IE, i keep it ONLY for getting 2 win updates, firefox is my main browser, as i find its the most secure

hope this helps

[venim]

Thanx MCT for the reply.

Well now my setup is running in vmware.

Ok I won't remove Ie (I will only have it for updates...)

Although forgot to say that U can remove some components from win2k3 with nlite..

[Tribble]

"Added automatic hacking of syssetup.dll for OOBE disabling (if you choose to remove it, this will not crack Activation)."

Doing this on a German SP2 RC1 CD will setup in text-mode cause to not copy syssetup.dll because of missing signature.

Wonder how to remove that 'pit-stop' ? Have to press ESC to continue with setup.

This was the only error message i got during text-mode setup while copying the files to the harddisk. In windows-based setup no problems at all.

Very nice tool, great work ! Waiting for more Updates Reduced my XP from ~500mb to ~180mb

BTW the download-link seems broken now. No wonder, after 100's of news pages reported about nLite which caused a lot of bandwidth b/c everybody linked to the same page. Seems someone removed the file now from the server

[Aaron]

Here's a torrent for anyone having trouble downloading (Requires a BitTorrent client)

nLite_0.94_installer.zip

nLite_0.94_installer.zip

[bucketbuster]

@Tribble,

I don't know for sure but I believe it is possible to add a signature using modpe.

Have a look at this thread:

It's about OOBE...

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=16414&hl=oobe

modpe081.zip

modpe081.zip

[Tribble]

reading through the whole nLite Thread atm, stressing

found "-winnt.sif is only copied if there is none, it will not overwrite yours

It's needed because you can get some unsigned drivers questions if there is no line to ignore driver signature,..."

im at work atm, when im back home i will give that a try, not sure if there was any winnt.sif on my xpcd.

@bucketbuster's

thank you, already read that thread but didnt noticed yet what modifype was for. finally got it, nice tool

does anybody have more informations about modifype, how it works ? tried google but doesnt give much informations at all, just that it manipulate the header of pe executables.

edit: "A PE utility that can add/delete physical/virtual space in any PE file. It can also realign your sections to make the files smaller. Source code included. Written in NASM."

but how does it get winxp to think the file has signature in this way? the question should be now what actually a driver signature is, i always thought its some special header in a file or something?

[bucketbuster]

It updates the internal checksum dll.

Run the following commands from cmd:

expand syssetup.dl_ syssetup.dll

PatchSysSetup.exe (Only if you didn't do before)

modifype.exe syssetup.dll -c

makecab syssetup.dll syssetup.dl_

[Tribble]

i know how to apply it having just 2 posts here, doesnt mean im a noob ;p

was just interesting what modifype does actually.

so what does it with the checksum? updates says nothing

[Ataraxia]

i know how to apply it having just 2 posts here, doesnt mean im a noob ;p

was just interesting what modifype does actually.

so what does it with the checksum? updates says nothing

it adds a checksum to the file which windows setup checks for. if it's a 'protected' OS file and the checksum doesn't match, setup will fail.

[nuhi]

@war59312, try reinstalling Framework

@Weed, recently i made it to autodetect unicode files...but there may be some leftovers, i'll double check it later...that was the issue of first versions and non-english languages, a disaster...but you must know that my problem wasn't that i can read only ansi, it was that i wrote ansi where it should be unicode.So you loose exotic characters

@venim, i hope that's not english windows you're using

About W2k3...don't encourage people to use it on other oses, yet

You can use it with Win2k too but there is a big issue, if something is selected then nothing gets installed...i'm searching for a cause

@MCT, now ie removal is little better, around 4MB or more...must say it's kinda disappointing, i thought it was bigger...maybe the issue is that half of it is integrated in every aspect of windows

@Tribble, if you have that kind of problem with the latest version (0.94) then it's old problem with modifype external usage...it's in data dir...keep it there, can you just post what directory are you using for nlitetivation...try it on simple as c:\xpcd and report did that help...if it did then i'll need to revise oobe hack.

[Tribble]

i know how to apply it having just 2 posts here, doesnt mean im a noob ;p

was just interesting what modifype does actually.

so what does it with the checksum? updates says nothing

it adds a checksum to the file which windows setup checks for. if it's a 'protected' OS file and the checksum doesn't match, setup will fail.

so where does it get the checksum from? i mean how does it know what the checksum should be?

and this digital signature has nothing to do with WHQL, right? Because i would wonder then why all the new betas of drivers etc. has no digital signature, when its so easy to 'add'. a driver which has whql always looks nicer for peoples than a driver without one.

[johann83]

and this digital signature has nothing to do with WHQL, right? Because i would wonder then why all the new betas of drivers etc. has no digital signature, when its so easy to 'add'. a driver which has whql always looks nicer for peoples than a driver without one.

This is NOT the same as the digital signature provided by Microsoft for drivers etc. The signature for WHQL certified drivers is generally provided in a seperate .CAT file. ModifyPE is simply modifying the internally stored checksum for the file to match that of the original (unmodified) file. This is done because the windows install routine refuses to copy files whose checksums do not match the pre-defined values (presumably to prevent someone from adding a virus etc to a windows install CD).

I don't know the dirty details of how ModifyPE does its job, but apparently it is possible to fool the installer into thinking that a modified file is in fact the official one from MS so that it will get copied. Again, this is simply for copying the file from the Windows CD during the install and has nothing to do with driver signing or digital signatures for other files (e.g. hotfixes). In most cases, you Windows setup will note an error or warning in one of the setup logs when it notices a modified file.

Regards,

Matt