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Slipstreaming Windows XP
Robert Hallock
May 22, 2008 1:00 AM ET in Tech
The Removal Stage
As operating systems tend to be a “One size fits all” solution, they come pre-packaged with support for hardware, features and files you may never use. In the removal stage nLite allows you to eliminate unnecessary components, giving you the opportunity to shrink the size of Windows both on the CD and on the hard drive, with the added benefit of a small increase in performance.
When first accessing the window represented in figure 4-1A, nLite will give you the opportunity to select aspects of Windows XP that you do not want to remove under any circumstances (Fig. 4-1B). We have gone ahead and selected the four features that should not be removed under any circumstances. Doing this will hide the various options that work to provide these features from the extensive menus in 4-1A.
Fig. 4-1A: Checking a box flags that component for removal.
Fig. 4-1B: The four Windows components that must stay on the CD.
As can be seen here, there are a great many components that go into making Windows XP what it is. When expanding one of the dropdowns, you will be given a list of items of that specific category that can be removed. As a general rule, any item written in red is a critical component of the OS. However, virtually all the components you can select for removal come with a description of their function when you mouse over them. This way, even if the item is flagged as critical, you can determine if it’s truly critical for your needs. For example, there is little reason why an owner of an Intel-based machine would want to keep support for Transmeta or AMD CPUs in the hardware support section.
More About Components
In figure 4-1A, we have pre-selected the four categories of components that virtually everyone can safely remove:
- Drivers: These are the drivers for common devices in 2001 when Windows XP was released. In 2008, there is little reason why any user would need or want such ancient drivers, so it is recommended that you remove them.
- Keyboards: Windows XP ships with support for dozens of keyboard layouts for various languages. This will remove all of them except the standard QWERTY layout for US English. UK users will undoubtedly want to keep their own at the end of this expanded category.
- Languages: Windows XP ships with support for displaying dozens of languages. Checking this will remove all languages but US English. Again, UK users will want to keep their dialect support at the end of this expanded category.
- Directories: If you have never opened your Windows XP CD and extracted any of the administrative utilities on it, it’s a pretty safe bet that these directories are unimportant to you.
Other categories also have extensive documentation that you can consult when deciding what to remove:
- Services: BlackViper has long been the authority on services for Windows. His site has an extensive list of the services, what function they perform, and under what circumstances you can keep or remove them.
For the remaining categories, you can invest the time to research each component, remove only the ones you’re explicitly familiar with, or simply move on to the next steps.
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