Slipstreaming Windows XP
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.
I liked this especially because of the thorough handling of of the drivers and options issues. I remember cobbling together my own slipstreams with Nero- this answers a lot of the questions, gotchas and inconveniences.
Well done, Rob- and thanks.
I do slipstreaming all the time at work. I've always done it the manual way which takes more time and lot of screw ups along the way. When nLite started a few years ago, I tinkered with it but never gave it a serious thought.
Rob (Thrax) has done a great job walking us through the process and, much to my chagrin, made my way of slipstreaming obsolete.
Rob,
You have outdone yourself. That's slick. Shall be following that in the week when I reinstall my desktop (finally!). Cool read
Your article is amazing and very useful. You are the only who puts detail in their article that is actually useful. Keep up the good work.
The only problem I had was getting the article printed out without all of the ads & comments. Not finding a print option on the web page
I used print preview, paged through until I found "about the author" and used that to print out the pages up to that for each web page of the article.
I am asuming that you play Tabula Rasa since your forum name is Thrax. Zarlon is my toon name when I play.
Thank You
Zarlon
No, I don't play TR. My name is actually inspired by a high score on the Autumn Valley track in 1994's The Need for Speed.
I'm very glad I could help you with one of my articles, Zarlon! Thanks for commenting.
I'll poke our web guru with a big stick to see if we can get a "print" button that will render a printable page in the future.
Nice suggestion.
cheers
This may sound like a dumb question but here goes.
You indicate that we can add programs by downloading them into the Addons directory. Do they just go into that directory or subdirectories?
I am building two versions, one an OEM (for me at home) and other is a VLK for work. Knowing how they go into the Addons directory will save me valuable time both at work and with my family/friends.
Thank You
Zarlon
PS. I am in the process of looking at all of your articles. Man you are a fountain of information & procedures. You are
You download the .CAB/.ZIP/.RAR/.7z files to that directory. It's just a storage folder, really, to keep things organized.
Hi!
after a very long sleepless weekend, hours of foul language and one big pile of newly burnt useless winxp installation cds - I am left to discover that all hope is lost and despite my heroic efforts to manually (and later with nlite) slipstream blooming windows xp - so it could acknowledge the existence of my very real (just ask Fedora) WD80 SATA drive on my crappy ASUS P4S800D MOBO - the forces of money grabbing evil (i.e SIS hatred, Micro[on global scale]Soft Evil and the rest of the lot) have once more prevailed! for it seems a "txtmode" version of the SIS 180 or 180OB - which according to section 5 of the slipstreaming article is needed for the rest of the just battle - is no where to be found on the World Wide Web - so it seems the only solution will be to write this weird forum S.O.S!
guys where's that driver in txtmode anyone anyone at all!?!?!
p.s
thanks for the article btw if I didn't stumble upon in it (round 4 am or so but still) I would keep burning copies of winxp containing cursed PNP drivers for ever!
ok think i got it now just had to drop the .oem file in the same folder as the drivers - this will be a good time to blow my brains off for being so dumb after all someone should hold responsible for all the suffering
can you tell me how to create this from the files stored in my recovery partition?
m.
It's not possible. A recovery partition is a proprietary piece of technology and generally cannot be harnessed to do anything outside of its intended purpose.
I have maybe the dumbest question... when i add the wmp11 exe to the addons, it says to either install wmp11 slipstreamer or to copy the installed .exe to the nlite root folder. and all the other addons are running the installations while nlite is processing the final steps. why is that ?? do i really have to re-install all my exe s to the pc ?? please help....
Where are you downloading the version of WMP11 you're using for nlite from?
microsoft site...
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/B...n&categoryid=4
and can you help me with the 2nd and most critical problem ?? why do all the exe s prompt as if i have to install them ?? and when i cancel them, nlite says that the addon is not the expected type...
Cheers...
The executables that can be integrated with nLite are not the same type of executable you can download from any website. In the application integration section of my guide there are three links to sites that have software specifically repackaged for the slipstreaming process. All of these sites carry WMP11 repackaged to work with nLite, and you must make sure that all software you're trying to integrate also comes from these three sites.
Thanks Buddy.. i should be able to carry the process from here onwards.
Cheers...
Thanks for stopping by, Panduka.
THANKYOU! THANKYOU! THANKYOU! I am one of those jerks that never posts comments, but I could not let this one go without expressing my gratitude. I am technical, but by no means a computer builder. Your Slipstreaming Forum was still able to walk me through step by step on how to bring myself out of 3 days of utter computer he((.
I appreciate the help that even the tech at the computer store could not give me. I will tell everyone I know that may be interested in this article all about it, and I look forward to reading more of your work.
You are a life saver. Keep it up.
Thanks, Walnutz.
I appreciate your comments.
Bookmarked. While I'm not ready to reinstall my XP builds, I'll sure be wanting to use this when that time comes. Thanks for putting together this how-to guide! =D
Welcome to Icrontic Bandrik. Stick around for the fun
No problem, Bandrik! Thanks for commenting!
great article
it is the first i m integrating components and drivers into a winxp cd
thanx a lot