What CAN and what CANNOT be compressed in I386

[Halfwalker]

Hey -

I've noticed that there are a lot of files in I386 that are not compressed. A lot. Does anyone know which ones are needed in uncompressed form, so we can compress the rest ?

I'm sure there are a lot that are candidates for compression. I noticed this after applying/integrating a couple of hotfixes, and then backing/syncing up my CD tree. Several files that were new from the hotfixes were in uncompressed form, like browseui.dll for example. So that one (among others) could be compressed.

D.

[tap52384]

The only file that I paid attention to out of the uncompressed bunch was winntbbu.dll, which is responsible for the setup billboard. I hypothesize that the files that are uncompressed are needed for setup itself, and thus cannot be compressed; simultaneously, I assume that nLite possibly removes some of these files and setup works just fine. Therefore, perhaps there could be some option to zip uncompressed files into some archive until needed. Also, speaking of compression, I wonder what type of compression nLite uses and if 7zip's 7z technology could somehow be incorporated--7zip's compression algorithm has proved invaluable in my unattended cd creation quest and my limitation of placing everything within a 700 MB image.

Edited December 15, 2005 by tap52384