“Love it or hate it – Windows is the dominant operating system in the world today. For all its flaws, Windows still rules the OS space for home users, probably because that is what they have been accustomed to use for a long time. This guide will show how to achieve a lean and mean Windows XP installation (using nLite) that runs smooth as a baby’s butt.”
I did a similar article (now a bit outdated, seeing as how nLite is in constant development) here: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Guides/windowscustomizat…
It’s not for the faint-of-heart, but if you’re putting together a system that won’t be a primary (say a media center PC that you turn on to listen to music and play movies), then it’s an awesome way to squeeze extra performance out of Windows. One of my more extreme nLite’d installs has an ~7-8 second boot time from after-POST to loaded desktop. 🙂
I stripped XP a long time ago with nLite to create an install cd for the new hardware at work. Didn’t pack it full of extra features though, just an XP sp2 version with all the useless junk ripped out. Left me with a 130 mb iso which I also use for installing virtual pc’s. I figured I’d have to download drivers or use the driver cd for unknown hardware anyway so I didn’t bother to customize it for a specific machine.
I could have used this over the summer when I had to create a couple of new images for our hardware at work. Instead I did it the long and hard way (no pun intended). Start a fresh install, load all the drivers for various hardware, install apps, configure desktop, then make a ghost image. Talk about time consuming and a pain. I’m sure nlite would have shaved some time from that.
I think it’s a pain that windows can’t update their driver support for windows installs more often. Windows media center 2005 with SP2 and all the updates still can’t detect my sata hard drive, and I STILL have to insert a floppy disk or throw it in the cd using nlite.
Sad really.