This guide will show you how to create a customised Windows XP/2003 CD with Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Windows Media Player and all the other Bloat removed. At the same time we will also show you the easy way to integrate a service pack into your new lightweight install.
What You Will Need:
- A copy of Windows XP / 2003
- The latest service pack for your OS (Download from Microsoft)
- A CD-Burner
- CD Writing program capable of buring ISO's to CD (Nero is a good one)
- 1gb of free hard disk space
- This great program: NLite
- .Net Framework
What We Will Be Removing:
This is only my personal preference, you will be able to choose exactly what you want to remove from your install. I have found that my custom version of Windows 2003 actually starts in under half the time of my normal Windows 2003 install with the following removed.
- Internet Explorer
- Windows Media Player
- Outlook Express
- Accessability Options
- Windows Update
- Support for 16bit Applications
- Support for 8.3 filenames
- And more.....
Lets Start Stripping!!
* Start by downloading the latest version of nlite from the link above, i chose tho download the 'Selfextracting archive' version rather than the 'installer' simply because id rather just run it from a folder, than install it on my machine.
* Run nlight either from the shortcut created by the installer, or from the nlight.exe file if you chose to download the archive. You will be presented with the following screen:
* Select your language, and click 'Next'. You will now see the following screen:
* Select the options to 'Integrate Service Pack', 'Remove Components', 'Options & Tweaks' and 'Bootable ISO'. Then click 'Next', which will bring you to the following screen:
* This is where you need to specify the location of the XP/2003 CD. So simply insert your CD into the drive, click 'Browse', select the drive with the CD in, and then click 'OK'.
You will then be prompted for a place to copy the files to (the contents of the cd need to be copied to your hard disk so that they are writable). Create a folder on your desktop, and select to put the files in there.
On clicking 'Next' it will begin to copy the files from your CD to your hard disk - This can take some time, so go make some coffee
When it is finished, you will be presented with the following screen:
* This is where you get the chance to integrate the latest service pack into your CD. Click 'Select' and then browse to the location that you saved the service pack '.exe' file.
The integration (slipstreaming) of the service pack will take approx 5 minutes, so its a good time to start drinking that coffee
When its done, you'll get a message saying "Integrated install has completed successfully". Just click 'OK', and then press 'Next' where you will be presented with the following box:
* This is where the fun begins. You get the chance to remove pretty much every single component included in the windows install. If you hover your mouse over each one it will give you some detail on what it is.
I removed the following components from my install:
- Accessibility Options (Magnification and stuff like that)
- Briefcase (For sync'ing files when offline)
- Client For Netware (I dont have a Netware Network)
- Communication Tools (Phone Dialer, Hyper Terminal)
- Frontpage Extensions (Hate Frontpage)
- Internet Connection Wizard (Wizard for setting up network connections)
- Internet Explorer (Replace this with Firefox )
- Internet Explorer Core (Removes the most exploited bit of software from your system)
- IIS (Not gonna be hosting any websites from my rig, so bye bye IIS)
- Netmeeting (Anyone still use this??)
- NWLINK IPX/SPX (Netware based networks protocol)
- Outlook Express (Replacing this with Thunderbird )
- Luna Theme (Removes Teletubby theme from your system)
- Old CD-Player (Going to be using Winamp - So Bye Bye!)
- Windows Media Player (As above - Gonna use Winamp)
- Windows Media Player 6.4 (Removing this will remove the ability to preview video's in explorer)
- 16-Bit Support (I dont use any ancient apps, so this is going too)
- MS Agent (Animated Helpers)
- Search Assistant (Stupid animated dog in search window)
- Zip Folders (I'm going to be installing winrar, so no need for this)
- Languages: I removed every language apart from 'English UK'. Feel free to remove all languages that are not required.
- Directories: Ditch them all, If you need anything from them, you can get it from your original Windows CD.
* Click 'Next', and then 'Next' again, to take you to the 'Tweaks' screens shown below:
* On the 'General 1' tab, the only thing i found useful was the ability to 'Merge Driver CABs'. All this does is combine the compressed files from the service pack in with the original compressed file. To be honest, it really doesn't matter.
* On the 'General 2' tab, there are two main items of interest. The USB poll frequency, which if increeased, should improve the performance of your USB devices slightly (better sensitivity on mice etc...), and the 'Keep Media Player compatability' which means if you chose to remove WMP, you can re-install it at any time.
* On the 'Tweaks' tab there are several hundred options. Most of them explain themselfs quite well, but i'll just go over the ones i selected:
- Do not use personalised menu's (Prevents Windows from hiding unused menus)
- Disable creation of 8.3 names (For backward compatability only)
- Recycle Bin Remove from desktop (I prefer no icons on desktop)
- Set sounnd scheme to 'No Sounds' (I'm not a fan of Windows defualt sounds)
- Faster Shutdown (Kills all applications straight away when you shutdown)
* Once you are happy with your selections, click 'Next' and then 'Yes' to start the process. Its coffee time again, as the selected options will take around 10 minutes to complete. When its finished, just click 'Next' to take you to the following screen:
* This is where you create the ISO file for burning on to a blank CD. Just click the 'Make ISO' button, and browse for a suitable location to place the file.
Once this process is complete, click 'Finish' to close nLite, and then proceed to open your favorite cd-burning software.
Burning And Installing
As i said earlier, your cd-writing software will need to have the ability to burn ISO images. I'm going to keep this section short and sweet because there are a million ways to do this
* I'm going to use Nero to burn my ISO, so all i need to do is go to 'Recorder=>Burn Image' as shown below:
* Once you've burned the CD, Proceed to reinstall Windows in the normal way, but using your special disk
You will then have a very lightweight version of Windows, ready for you to install applications such as Firefox, Thunderbird, Winamp...or whatever you want
If you are worried about what Windows will look like without Internet Explorer, and all the other gunk, take a look at my desktop:
Thats about it from me, any questions or concerns, just ask
What You Will Need:
- A copy of Windows XP / 2003
- The latest service pack for your OS (Download from Microsoft)
- A CD-Burner
- CD Writing program capable of buring ISO's to CD (Nero is a good one)
- 1gb of free hard disk space
- This great program: NLite
- .Net Framework
What We Will Be Removing:
This is only my personal preference, you will be able to choose exactly what you want to remove from your install. I have found that my custom version of Windows 2003 actually starts in under half the time of my normal Windows 2003 install with the following removed.
- Internet Explorer
- Windows Media Player
- Outlook Express
- Accessability Options
- Windows Update
- Support for 16bit Applications
- Support for 8.3 filenames
- And more.....
Lets Start Stripping!!
* Start by downloading the latest version of nlite from the link above, i chose tho download the 'Selfextracting archive' version rather than the 'installer' simply because id rather just run it from a folder, than install it on my machine.
* Run nlight either from the shortcut created by the installer, or from the nlight.exe file if you chose to download the archive. You will be presented with the following screen:
* Select your language, and click 'Next'. You will now see the following screen:
* Select the options to 'Integrate Service Pack', 'Remove Components', 'Options & Tweaks' and 'Bootable ISO'. Then click 'Next', which will bring you to the following screen:
* This is where you need to specify the location of the XP/2003 CD. So simply insert your CD into the drive, click 'Browse', select the drive with the CD in, and then click 'OK'.
You will then be prompted for a place to copy the files to (the contents of the cd need to be copied to your hard disk so that they are writable). Create a folder on your desktop, and select to put the files in there.
On clicking 'Next' it will begin to copy the files from your CD to your hard disk - This can take some time, so go make some coffee
When it is finished, you will be presented with the following screen:
* This is where you get the chance to integrate the latest service pack into your CD. Click 'Select' and then browse to the location that you saved the service pack '.exe' file.
The integration (slipstreaming) of the service pack will take approx 5 minutes, so its a good time to start drinking that coffee
When its done, you'll get a message saying "Integrated install has completed successfully". Just click 'OK', and then press 'Next' where you will be presented with the following box:
* This is where the fun begins. You get the chance to remove pretty much every single component included in the windows install. If you hover your mouse over each one it will give you some detail on what it is.
I removed the following components from my install:
- Accessibility Options (Magnification and stuff like that)
- Briefcase (For sync'ing files when offline)
- Client For Netware (I dont have a Netware Network)
- Communication Tools (Phone Dialer, Hyper Terminal)
- Frontpage Extensions (Hate Frontpage)
- Internet Connection Wizard (Wizard for setting up network connections)
- Internet Explorer (Replace this with Firefox
)- Internet Explorer Core (Removes the most exploited bit of software from your system)
- IIS (Not gonna be hosting any websites from my rig, so bye bye IIS)
- Netmeeting (Anyone still use this??)
- NWLINK IPX/SPX (Netware based networks protocol)
- Outlook Express (Replacing this with Thunderbird
)- Luna Theme (Removes Teletubby theme from your system)
- Old CD-Player (Going to be using Winamp - So Bye Bye!)
- Windows Media Player (As above - Gonna use Winamp)
- Windows Media Player 6.4 (Removing this will remove the ability to preview video's in explorer)
- 16-Bit Support (I dont use any ancient apps, so this is going too)
- MS Agent (Animated Helpers)
- Search Assistant (Stupid animated dog in search window)
- Zip Folders (I'm going to be installing winrar, so no need for this)
- Languages: I removed every language apart from 'English UK'. Feel free to remove all languages that are not required.
- Directories: Ditch them all, If you need anything from them, you can get it from your original Windows CD.
* Click 'Next', and then 'Next' again, to take you to the 'Tweaks' screens shown below:
* On the 'General 1' tab, the only thing i found useful was the ability to 'Merge Driver CABs'. All this does is combine the compressed files from the service pack in with the original compressed file. To be honest, it really doesn't matter.
* On the 'General 2' tab, there are two main items of interest. The USB poll frequency, which if increeased, should improve the performance of your USB devices slightly (better sensitivity on mice etc...), and the 'Keep Media Player compatability' which means if you chose to remove WMP, you can re-install it at any time.
* On the 'Tweaks' tab there are several hundred options. Most of them explain themselfs quite well, but i'll just go over the ones i selected:
- Do not use personalised menu's (Prevents Windows from hiding unused menus)
- Disable creation of 8.3 names (For backward compatability only)
- Recycle Bin Remove from desktop (I prefer no icons on desktop)
- Set sounnd scheme to 'No Sounds' (I'm not a fan of Windows defualt sounds)
- Faster Shutdown (Kills all applications straight away when you shutdown)
* Once you are happy with your selections, click 'Next' and then 'Yes' to start the process. Its coffee time again, as the selected options will take around 10 minutes to complete. When its finished, just click 'Next' to take you to the following screen:
* This is where you create the ISO file for burning on to a blank CD. Just click the 'Make ISO' button, and browse for a suitable location to place the file.
Once this process is complete, click 'Finish' to close nLite, and then proceed to open your favorite cd-burning software.
Burning And Installing
As i said earlier, your cd-writing software will need to have the ability to burn ISO images. I'm going to keep this section short and sweet because there are a million ways to do this
* I'm going to use Nero to burn my ISO, so all i need to do is go to 'Recorder=>Burn Image' as shown below:
* Once you've burned the CD, Proceed to reinstall Windows in the normal way, but using your special disk
You will then have a very lightweight version of Windows, ready for you to install applications such as Firefox, Thunderbird, Winamp...or whatever you want
If you are worried about what Windows will look like without Internet Explorer, and all the other gunk, take a look at my desktop:
Thats about it from me, any questions or concerns, just ask
). 
