Shrinking Windows

Hello everyone,

i recently read about microsizing windows95 here...

URL

I was wondering if there are similar things for WindowsXP? Or just a place to find out which files are essential and not.

--Barnacle

well there are a lot of things u can do to make win xp smaller.. just delete some files u dont need..

there are a buncha *.cab file laying around, some fonts u dont need, and the registry can be compacted down a lot.

Thanks for the suggestions!

That was the general idea, get rid of the stuff you don't need. The site I linked to had reduced Win95 to 4MB. In order to get that low you need to start taking out alot of ingrained stuff. However, I don't want to go around deleting system files being as I don't really know what is essential or not. I was hoping people around here would have a pretty good idea of what files are needed to keep the system from crashing.

I don't even have a practical purpose for a super stripped down version of XP other than I find it interesting, and it looked like a good subject to learn about. Right now I have no idea what little programs MS clumps in with their OS. I think it would be nice to strip out everything and reinsert the things I really want.

--Barnacle

yeah, whatd be good is remove the extra crap u dont need, burn ur own installation of the windows xp cd.

XP is very particular about what is removed, before service pack 1 i removed the msn explorer and msn messenger and the thing crashed everything system wise is interconnected, if you do remove anything, dont remove shared components for any reason. and if you are not sure, dont remove anything that came with windows, just dont use it if you dont like it, service pack 1 makes it easier to use other browsers, applets for third party software, but i dont recommend removing the items installed with xp

Yea, shrink it baby. Where do ya wanna start?

After thinking about it, Windows 2000 might be better to shrink, but all I have is XP and I don't have the money to buy another OS to play around with. Well, to start I guess i should just go through the things i want to keep.

1) basic GUI
2) Networking
3) Secure Logon
4) Ie I guess being as it's really built into the OS now, but if there is a way to remove all the better.

I just did a fresh install and I noticed that when you install XP it never asks you what programs you want to include, it just installs everything. Oh well, I'm going on a bike trip to Oregon so I'll have to wait a week or so before I start deleting things and seeing what happens.

W2k is old. Shrink something relevant. Who is this that got Win95 down to 4 mb? What kind of Win95 was left?

There are browsers that take only 1 mb of hd space.

We gonna burn it baby.