Windows 2003 and HFCLEANUP

[fdv]

I'm just wondering about the level of demand for reduction sets for 2003. This is not starting a war with nLite or anything crazy, this is just to gauge demand.

This is in the HFSLIP forum for a reason... I don't want people in the main NT forum answering "reducing the OS makes it unstable!!11eleven!!" HFSLIP'ers, even if they don't reduce their OS, know the mods here and their work and know we're not careless... we tend to go to painful extremes in fact to get things right, IMO.

I want to guage interest in the 2003 reduction set files. I know people like and use nLite, and that's fine, but nLite is made for tweakers, and the reduction fileset work is really to remove a lot of junk from the OS in one shot without having to think about it... a "just make it into a desktop OS" method. (I do realize that nLite lets you re-load your presets).

Edited April 1, 2006 by fdv

[Tomcat76]

Good thread. I'm definitely into this.

BTW... It's nice to be the first voter. Then I get to see "Should have had an interface like Windows 2000" at 100% for this one time...

[Kramy]

Can't say I've really seen the Win2k3 shell. I'd use it though, so long as it has Win+R

Edit: Oh, and no lame folder resizing like XP's Explorer. Folders should adapt to fit the number of files in them perfectly! I don't want huge whitespace when I have 40 windows open.

Edited April 2, 2006 by Kramy

[saugatak]

I like Win2k3 Server a lot. I wouldn't mind using it as my OS desktop with the FDV fileset except that it would be illegal whereas I have legal copies of Win2k.

[tain]

I'm sure that everyone already knows about this except me, but here it goes anyway:

http://win2k3.msfn.org/

I found it on this page along with lots of other neat guides.

Edited April 2, 2006 by TAiN

[fdv]

I'm sure that everyone already knows about this except me, but here it goes anyway:

http://win2k3.msfn.org/

Well, it is a great guide, but we're working to eliminate the need for doing every step in that process.

You just download the right files, drop them into HFCLEANUP, and run HFSLIP... and it will do all of that stuff for you, so you don't have to!

[tain]

@FDV: I think we are on the same page, but we don't know it

I was just posting that because your 2k3 project is in the works and I thought that the guide might help answer some questions that come up. Cheers!

Edited April 2, 2006 by TAiN

[fdv]

Bumping for the sake of new people to the forum and those who haven't voted yet.

I would say that the consensus is that the Windows 2000 fileset is as perfect and slimmed down as it can get. I have been at work on 2003. Things are moving on this and I've been through two test phases with Svajunas.

I need a volunteer to test this file on XP.

The junk-removal INF is done as is here: http://www.vorck.com/data/2003-key-killer.inf

Those weird errors that cropped up: gone. The key killer would appear to be finalized.

Testing in XP will help ultimately create a junk cleaner for XP, I think.

I need volunteers for a list of junk files.

I have on my site the file list of files that install in Windows 2003. I am not giving out the URL here because it's ~290k and I don't need a bunch of hits by curious people, just those who want to be involved. It's been consolidated from the TXTSETUP file and alphabetized.

The file list basically needs semicolons in front of useless files. HFCLEANUP can do this reduction job, but whether I make a new 2003 fileset or make HFCLEANUP files, either way, I can still use a list of useless files.

What I need is for a pool of volunteers. We would split the English alphabet. For example, if I had one helper, I would take A-L and they would do M-Z. Three would let us split A-H, I-Q, R-Z. Etcetera.

The primary resource is the TXTSETUP.INF file from my FDV fileset for Windows 2000. We comment the same files in the 2003 list too. In addition, we remove new junk files, such as those with a "IIS" in the name. The project requires some attention to detail, a few nights of work, and some experience with what is junk (IEXPLORE.EXE versus NTOSKRNL.EXE). I don't remove language files, I never did -- I have too many non-English users, so that makes it a bit easier.

Once we finish the work and add semicolons, the list can be adapted to an HFCLEANUP file, or easily become a file in a new 2003 FDV fileset. In either case, I can create an XP HFCLEANUP file from this data too, so this work will help our XP users too.

I need an icon specialist volunteer.

I also need someone with icon-creation abilities who can put icons into a DLL, because I need to add a DLL in order to change this horrific XP-style interface. I'd use Windows 2000's look but I want completely new icons. I have icons to contribute but I'd love for you Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro geeks to contribute yours too, might as well have some choice here.

Participants should email me. You can PM me too if you want.

[x-pert]

Correction

The primary resource is the TXTSETUP.SIF file from FDV's fileset for Windows 2000.

[Camarade_Tux]

I think I could test it on XP. I'm not sure because to test I would need to borrow another computer and I don't know if I will be able to soon.

About the icon thing, you can do it with reshacker or XN Resource editor.

Reshacker supports directive files which can be really helpful in such projects. For example, that's how files are updated when installing Bircopacks (flyakiteOSX/Gant/Milk....)

[fdv]

i did it on xp. ffft. it was a big nada. it only destroyed internet explorer and didn't do much else.

windows 2003 really does have very different registry values.

icons: no, i just wanted a dll only containing some slick icons, not to put icons with any specific program.

[Bugs Bunny]

If you just want to put icons in one file together, why don't use icl files (icon librarys)?

I used this to get some XP icons into w2k. You can adress icons within an icl file like it's done for a dll. (Well dlls suppot 2 methods, the icls just one).

IconLover is a good program to create icl files

[tommyp]

My vote is for bugs bunny's icl files. I've been HAPPILY using these ICL he most posted a few months back. I would say that this is probably one of the nicest contributions to the HFSLIP board. Thanks again Bugs!!!

[tain]

And now...time for a convenient link!

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=69221

Edited May 17, 2006 by TAiN

[Kramy]

Don't suppose I should link a bunch of system files I hacked a while ago? They're basically all USP versions of files, but with hacked XP icons(more than bugs' ones).

Oh, and incase anyone wants it, I also wrote an HFSVCPACK cmd file that checks which .ICL files are present and only registers icons for those.