Stripping down Windows XP

[yourbeliefs]

I just got a netbook for my wife. It works good, but unfortunately the a**holes at ASUS put in 2 SSD's with the XP partition only being 4 GBs. And Windows XP takes up 2.75 GBs by itself, leaving very little space left for anything else on the main drive and causing numerous low memory messages. We tried deleting programs from the C: drive and moving it to the larger, secondary SSD, but after running Windows Updates and such, we're down to less than 300 megabytes, which is really unacceptable.

I found this guide that talks about stripping out a lot of the excess software from XP, but it requires reinstalling everything and an external Optical drive (which I don't have.) Does anyone know of any way or program that provides similar functionality on stripping out windows stuff you don't want on an existing XP installation?

 

[digiblur]

Are you sure it is 2 SSD's and not just one partitioned out?

 

[yourbeliefs]

Are you sure it is 2 SSD's and not just one partitioned out?

Yes. It's two separate drives on a PCI card. Many other people ran into this same issue and all noted that it wasn't just a bad partitioning job.

 

[Auric]

MSConfig is the only program I know about... MS has a tablet version of XP. Have you tried that?

 

[Ramy]

Here is a good site on what services you can turn off too, to save memory.

Black Viper's Web Site

 

[grydlok]

EeeUser Forum
has all you need, also download a copy of nLite.

 

[yourbeliefs]

EeeUser Forum
has all you need, also download a copy of nLite.

I looked into the nLite thing, but I'm a little wary of it. First off, the setup for it is staggering and daunting. Secondly, Asus didn't give me a copy of Windows XP as a backup. They just put it in as a Ghost file, on their backup DVD (which is great considering I don't even have a media drive) which really doesn't make sense.
Actually that reminds me that I need to call them, because I need to install Chinese language input and need a copy of Windows XP Cd-rom, which I can't get from a friggin Ghost image..

Update:

According to them: Because you never really own a copy of XP, you only license it, Asus has no obligation to provide a full installation disc.
If you really want to do it your way, the only option is to purchase another XP disc (license).

Which of course is a more diplomatic way of saying, "Go F Yourself."

Does anyone see a problem with just using another XP Disc, copying it to my thumb drive, and pointing it to the files there for the Language installation? Also, I'm assuming that Product Keys are not "set" on discs, and that you can use the key from one equivalent version on another installation? What I mean is that I could get an existing copy of XP Home, slipstream upgrade it to SP3, and use the product key with my Netbook and it should register and activate fine, right? Because there's no way in hell I'm buying another copy of XP simply to do these things.

 

[snathanb]

A couple of pointers.

1) There are plenty of stripped-down versions of XP floating around on the net you can use. Just activate them with your legal key that came with the netbook. I have one running on mine and it's great, gets XP down to way under 1 gb.

2) You can easily cobble together an external optical drive using a standard off-the-shelf optical drive and an external hard drive enclosure. They use the same ATA interface. That's exactly what I did when I converted by original network from Linux to XP.

3) Disable the virtual memory paging in XP. That is likely the source of your memory problems.

 

[yourbeliefs]

A couple of pointers.

1) There are plenty of stripped-down versions of XP floating around on the net you can use. Just activate them with your legal key that came with the netbook. I have one running on mine and it's great, gets XP down to way under 1 gb.

2) You can easily cobble together an external optical drive using a standard off-the-shelf optical drive and an external hard drive enclosure. They use the same ATA interface. That's exactly what I did when I converted by original network from Linux to XP.

3) Disable the virtual memory paging in XP. That is likely the source of your memory problems.

I think we may be ok. I got the chinese input working now and we havent got any low memory warnings lately. I thought the VM was an issue, but it turns out it was never enabled in the first place. I got 2 GB in here anyways, so I doubt I would have needed it.

 

[guapoharry]

I looked into the nLite thing, but I'm a little wary of it. First off, the setup for it is staggering and daunting.

No, it's not as bad as it might first appear. Look for posts in forums where people explain how they did the nLite thing. Look at how they did it and it will give you confidence when you find the right one.

Secondly, Asus didn't give me a copy of Windows XP as a backup. They just put it in as a Ghost file, on their backup DVD

Don't they give you something that unpacks the Ghost image to your SSD? Why not unpack the operating system to your 8GB drive? Then put the virtual memory paging file on the other drive and limit to half a gig to one gig... Install applications to the other drive too until you run out of space...

I have a Dell netbook running on one 8 gig SSD and I don't have any problems. Bear in mind on it, I don't have all of the crap people usually put on their desktop. IT'S a NETBOOK. If you want bunch of stuff on your netbook, you ought to get one with a 160 GB drive and a big battery...

Does anyone see a problem with just using another XP Disc, copying it to my thumb drive, and pointing it to the files there for the Language installation? Also, I'm assuming that Product Keys are not "set" on discs, and that you can use the key from one equivalent version on another installation? What I mean is that I could get an existing copy of XP Home, slipstream upgrade it to SP3, and use the product key with my Netbook and it should register and activate fine, right? Because there's no way in hell I'm buying another copy of XP simply to do these things.

Yeah, that's doable. But bear in mind that netbooks are released with a special version of XP called XP UMPC (UltraMobilePC). Believe it or not, it is already stripped down.....

A couple of pointers.
1) There are plenty of stripped-down versions of XP floating around on the net you can use. Just activate them with your legal key that came with the netbook. I have one running on mine and it's great, gets XP down to way under 1 gb.

Yeah, that's where I don't want to get a copy of my operating system, "floating around on the net" - unless I never intend to use passwords or other personal info that could be compromised by rootkits, viruses and malware imbedded in possibly dubious code...

3) Disable the virtual memory paging in XP. That is likely the source of your memory problems.

You could have said, move the virtual paging file to the other drive, or make it smaller... But if the OP took that that advice, all of the operating system plus applications that are running have to run in 1 gigs of RAM..:rant: (unless they added more RAM)

I think we may be ok. I got the chinese input working now and we havent got any low memory warnings lately. I thought the VM was an issue, but it turns out it was never enabled in the first place. I got 2 GB in here anyways, so I doubt I would have needed it.

Heh... All of your stuff fits in 2 GB.... Just wait...

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Interesting how Asus has setup different models. My netbook has a 16GB SSD, all one partition. Added a 16gb class 6 SDHC card for extra storage; so far, so good.

I appreciate the links provided here about trimming it down; I am still trying to make mine more lean too.

 

[grydlok]

I looked into the nLite thing, but I'm a little wary of it. First off, the setup for it is staggering and daunting. Secondly, Asus didn't give me a copy of Windows XP as a backup. They just put it in as a Ghost file, on their backup DVD (which is great considering I don't even have a media drive) which really doesn't make sense.
Actually that reminds me that I need to call them, because I need to install Chinese language input and need a copy of Windows XP Cd-rom, which I can't get from a friggin Ghost image..

Update:

According to them: Because you never really own a copy of XP, you only license it, Asus has no obligation to provide a full installation disc.
If you really want to do it your way, the only option is to purchase another XP disc (license).

Which of course is a more diplomatic way of saying, "Go F Yourself."

Does anyone see a problem with just using another XP Disc, copying it to my thumb drive, and pointing it to the files there for the Language installation? Also, I'm assuming that Product Keys are not "set" on discs, and that you can use the key from one equivalent version on another installation? What I mean is that I could get an existing copy of XP Home, slipstream upgrade it to SP3, and use the product key with my Netbook and it should register and activate fine, right? Because there's no way in hell I'm buying another copy of XP simply to do these things.

Trust me Nlite is very easy.
I removed enough stuff that made my XP install right at 1.2 gig.

 

[grydlok]

Interesting how Asus has setup different models. My netbook has a 16GB SSD, all one partition. Added a 16gb class 6 SDHC card for extra storage; so far, so good.

I appreciate the links provided here about trimming it down; I am still trying to make mine more lean too.

If you use Nlite or something similar remove all the multiple keyboard, language, and fonts. You would be surprised how much you will save.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

If you use Nlite or something similar remove all the multiple keyboard, language, and fonts. You would be surprised how much you will save.

I just manually went in and got rid of all of the excess languages, and the fonts they came with. I have not trimmed down on other fonts yet, need to spend some time thinking that through.

Can nLite be used on an existing install; its just not all totally clear to me yet. Looked like it was something you use at the OS install time.

To be honest I am also waiting for Win7 to see if there is an optimized version for netbooks. But the ne

 

[grydlok]

I just manually went in and got rid of all of the excess languages, and the fonts they came with. I have not trimmed down on other fonts yet, need to spend some time thinking that through.

Can nLite be used on an existing install; its just not all totally clear to me yet. Looked like it was something you use at the OS install time.

To be honest I am also waiting for Win7 to see if there is an optimized version for netbooks. But the ne

NLite can't be used with existing install. It's for a fresh installs. There is a version of nLite that works with Win7 now.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

NLite can't be used with existing install. It's for a fresh installs. There is a version of nLite that works with Win7 now.

That is what I thought; I've filed this info away for when I am ready to do something, but for now the netbook is working fine.