How to strip Windows XP Pro right back for speed?

NiftyDigits

Some use Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs for that kind of thing.

Lum

There is no legitimate way for a home user to get hold of Windows Fundamentals. It's only legal for corporate customers with software assurance. It's also a bit of a pain in the backside since it's based on XP Embedded which is a bit weird.

Those XP lite distros you can download are actually more kosher than you might think. Microsoft licensing doesn't care about people copying physical media, they only care about you using a legit product key. Just beware of the ones that come with a crack built in. Also beware of the ones based on a corporate XP CD as these will only accept a corporate product key that you probably don't own. However you can convert them by editing setupp.ini on the CD before you install.

nLite is probably the safest way, just need to experiment with what is safe to remove and what isn't.

Kernel_Sanders

Toxteth_OGrady wrote: »

http://www.blackviper.com/2002/04/17/black-vipers-windows-xp-super-tweaks/

He writes ensure you are fully aware of the risks of tweaking your system before doing so.
Well, where do I read about these risks? He then advocates getting rid of system restore; presumably he recommends doing a full backup beforehand. I don't have that much HDD or SD space anywhere, I just want to free space on my HDD which is forever giving me the 'low disc space warning'. I perform the scan and it usually comes up with something like '450MB can be saved by compressing old files'. When I do so, it'll then say something like 'you now have 250MB free' so I have no idea what happens to the other 200+MB.

closed

tweaking has nothing to do with freeing disk space, if you don't want to risk a non booting machine, have no backups, and don't understand the consequences of disabling services, it's pointless looking at the site.

There are many threads on here about disk space, search for windirstat. There are also many threads mentioning the importance of backups.

Nine_Lives

Just to clarify-

What is being recommended here? I see talk of freeing up disk space. Disk space isn't the issue that concerns me as i wont be saving anything to disk. The OS will purely be used to run a car diagnostics program, nothing more, nothing less.
So what i need is for the OS to operate as quickly & smoothly as possible. Not to be able to store more images or whatever.

closed

disk space was what someone else asked about, however a big xp vm may impact slightly on load times, and it will be saved to hard disk

don't see the point of tweaking a virtual machine, just use a basic install of xp and turn off windows update, you don't really need service packs if it's only being used for diagnostic software, backup the vhd when you have everything working (if it works)

Lum

Nine_Lives wrote: »

What is being recommended here? I see talk of freeing up disk space. Disk space isn't the issue that concerns me as i wont be saving anything to disk. The OS will purely be used to run a car diagnostics program, nothing more, nothing less.
So what i need is for the OS to operate as quickly & smoothly as possible. Not to be able to store more images or whatever.

Does your diagnostic program work on Windows 98?

wongataa

Nine_Lives wrote: »

Just to clarify-

What is being recommended here? I see talk of freeing up disk space. Disk space isn't the issue that concerns me as i wont be saving anything to disk. The OS will purely be used to run a car diagnostics program, nothing more, nothing less.
So what i need is for the OS to operate as quickly & smoothly as possible. Not to be able to store more images or whatever.

Well just do a clean install of XP and do not install anything else aprt from your diagnostic software. That is all you need to do and you won't run the risk of breaking things by fiddling with services etc.

If you want to prevent other people installing/saving stuff then look into giving everyone else access to a user account to use where such things are disabled. You could also look into using SteadyState that would return Windows to a particular state evrytime it is rebooted just in case anything is changed.

Nine_Lives

Lum wrote: »

Does your diagnostic program work on Windows 98?

The lowest version of Windows i've tested it on is WinXP.

Had bother with Win7 64 bit but got there in the end.

NiftyDigits

Lum wrote: »

There is no legitimate way for a home user to get hold of Windows Fundamentals. It's only legal for corporate customers with software assurance. It's also a bit of a pain in the backside since it's based on XP Embedded which is a bit weird.

Those XP lite distros you can download are actually more kosher than you might think. Microsoft licensing doesn't care about people copying physical media, they only care about you using a legit product key. Just beware of the ones that come with a crack built in. Also beware of the ones based on a corporate XP CD as these will only accept a corporate product key that you probably don't own. However you can convert them by editing setupp.ini on the CD before you install.

nLite is probably the safest way, just need to experiment with what is safe to remove and what isn't.

Windows XP Embedded would likely be perfect for the OP. Which is probably why Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs would work too.

I have no idea as to which licences are available to the OP. Just letting him know what is out there.