Create a stream-lined Vista install
Logan Booker
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Nov 28, 2007 11:57 AM
What to do when Vista asks if its bum looks fat on this DVD.
Ever since the release of Windows Vista at the start of this year, we’ve been dealing with one inevitable truth: The OS upgrade is coming. Try as you might to hang on to the almost perfect loveliness of Windows XP, or even 2000, Vista will eventually offer too much, especially to gamers, to resist.
That doesn’t mean you have to do it Microsoft’s way, however. We’re going to show you how you can strip the unneeded bits from Vista, leaving only the tastiest components to be installed.
Preparing
This is probably obvious, but you’re going to need a legitimate copy of Windows Vista with a valid product key. It doesn’t matter which flavour of Vista you have, but we’ll be using Ultimate for the purposes of this tutorial. We also need to download a few things:
vlite: a wonderful utility that gives us the ability to remove chunks from the Vista install, tweak certain aspects of the OS, and create an unattended install. It’s not that complicated to use, but it does have a few quirks that can slow you down if you haven’t used it before.
Vista Update Pack 1.0.3: There’s a number of ways to get your hands on the latest updates, but this is by far the fastest. Contained in the aforementioned RAR is a bunch of hotfixes and patches released for Vista over the last year. There’s a few newer ones missing, but the most important two, KB938194 and KB938979, are included. See the ‘Vista Reliability Packs’ page for more information.
Now, install vlite. There’s not much to it: just point it to a directory on your hard drive and let it extract. Before we run it however, we need to do the following:
1. Insert your Vista DVD into your PC, and copy the contents across to a temporary directory. You may want to create a backup of this temp folder somewhere, to save you from having to recopy the Vista install files if you screw up. It’s about 2.5GB worth of data.
2. Open the Vista_Update_Pack_V1.0.3.rar archive, and find the directories ‘Extracted’ and ‘x86’. Both can be found in the Updates folder of the RAR. Decompress them to another temporary directory.
That’s it! Now find vLite on your desktop or Start menu, and start it up.
Venturing into vLite
The first thing vLite will prompt you to do is install a WIM Filter. The WIM filter allows vLite to access the special image file that contains all the Vista installs. Without it, we won’t be able to create a slipstreamed image, so say yes when asked to install it. Thankfully, you won’t need to reboot for this.
Once this dialog box is gone, you’ll see a drop-down box in the middle of the vLite window. Hit the browse button to the right of it and locate the directory where you copied the contents of the Vista DVD. vLite should analyse the folder, and then prompt you to select a flavour of the OS. As mentioned previously, we’re going to use Ultimate, but choose whichever one you have a valid key for. Hit the Next button.
Now we need to configure what we want to play with. Unless you’re the timid type, tick all the boxes, which will include:
Integration
Components
Tweaks
Unattended Setup
Bootable ISO
Enable Before Apply
‘Enable Before Apply’ is particularly important, as you won’t be able to create a bootable ISO otherwise.
The next page allows us to integrate language and driver packs into the install, and is one of the most powerful features of vLite. We’re not going to worry about language packs, as Vista comes with English, and we’re also going to give driver integration a miss, as the last thing you want in your clean install is redundant drivers if you ever decide to replace your hardware. Best to keep the install as light as possible.
With hotfixes, however, we’re going to go all out. In the Hotfixes tab, hit the ‘Enable’ checkbox, then click the Insert button. First, browse to the ‘Extracted’ folder we decompressed earlier, select all the updates you find there, and hit Open. vLite will automatically import them, and they should appear in the list box. Now follow the same procedure for the ‘x86’ directory.
We’re finished with this page, so we’ll hit next to get to the really good stuff – content removal.
Out with it!
Removing unwanted components from Vista has many benefits. It reduces the size of the image, increases the speed of installation, and reduces the amount of space taken up by the final install. A word of warning, though – when vLite removes a component, it’s gone. Vista will consider it to have never existed, so trying to run or patch a missing component will result in an error. There’s also no way of adding back in a missing component, short of a fresh install.
Before you can hack anything out, vLite will provide you with several ‘compatibility’ options. Essentially, these checkboxes prevent you from inadvertently removing support for components you need. Feel free to select what’s relevant to you, but here’s our recommendation:
Aero Glass
Internet Explorer
Windows Performance Index
Now, what components to remove? Here’s our list of things you can get rid of. If for some reason you need something, then by all means keep it, but most of the time you’re not going to miss any of these.
Accessories
Accessibility
Mobility Center
Welcome Center
Sidebar and Gadgets
Drivers
Modem
Printers
Scanners
Games
Inbox Games
Premium Inbox Games
Don’t remove Game Explorer - some newer games require it
Hardware Support
Windows Image Acquisition
Windows Mobile Device Center
Windows Portable Devices
Smartcards
Languages
Korean
Japanese
Simplified and Traditional Chinese
Multimedia
Media Center
Movie and DVD maker
Sample Pictures
Screensavers
Shell Event Sounds
Sideshow
Windows Calender
Windows Photo Gallery
Network
Connect to a Network Projector
Internet Information Services (if you plan to not run a web server from you machine)
MSN Installer
Remote Destkop and Assistance
Remote Desktop Client
Windows Collaboration
Windows Mail
Windows Firewall
Services
Computer Browser
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Error Reporting
Internet Connection Sharing
DFS Replication
Offline Files
Volume Shadow Copy
Windows Search
System
Bitlocker Drive Encryption
Malicious Software Removal Tool
Manual Install
Microsoft Agent
Natural Language
Parental Controls
Security Center
Sync Center
System Restore
Tablet PC
Windows Backup
Windows Defender
Windows Easy Transfer
Zip Folders
As you can see, there’s a metric buttload of stuff you can just rip out. After cannibalising your Vista install in this manner you should be able to reduce the size of your image from 2.5GB to just 900MB. As an aside, most of this space is taken up by Media Center.
Tweaking
vLite 1.1 beta sadly does not include an extensive set of tweaks, but the ones it does have are very welcome. Here are our recommendations as to what settings to use:
Security tab
DEP (Data Execution Protection): Off
DEP has been known to cause certain programs to not function correctly. Atomicans are pretty savvy when it comes to viruses and the like, so protection from buffer overruns is overkill.
Disable AntiSpyware Realtime Protection: Yes
For the same reasons we turn off DEP, so do we get rid of this. We also reclaim some system resources.
User Account Control: Off
Do you hate how Vista asks permission to do pretty much everything? You do? So do we. Let’s disable it before the OS is even booted.
System tab
Hibernation: Off
It’s unlikely you’ll use this, ever, so reclaim drive space and turn this off.
Power scheme: High performance
Make sure Vista doesn’t throttle your CPU or drive speeds and whack this to high performance. Do this even if you’re installing to a laptop, as you can always customise the setting in Vista later.
Explorer tab
The settings here define what’s hidden to you in Explorer’s folder views. If, like us, you want to see everything, set all the ‘Show...’ entries to ‘Yes’.
Unattended activities
The second last tab in our adventure allows us to fully automate our Vista install, barring serious errors. The image above shows what options you should check – just replace the product key with a valid one and input your own username and password.
If you decide to skip the product key entry, the OS will still install, but you won’t be able to download updates until you enter a key and have it verified. Of course, there’s also the whole “30 days to activate” thing as well.
Burn, baby, burn
Finally the configuring is done, leaving us with just two steps to go – applying the changes and creating a bootable ISO. If you’re happy with your changes, hit the ‘Apply’ button in the bottom right corner of the screen. When the dialog box appears, select the ‘Apply and rebuild’ option. This will merge the hotfixes, and your changes, into the Windows image, reducing the overall size significantly. Depending on how many hotfixes you’ve applied and components you’ve removed (quite a few if you followed every step of ours), this can take some time, so go for a run or finish laundering your filthy lucre while it goes to work.
When it’s finished, all you need to do is burn the image! You can either create an ISO for repeated use (which is what we recommend), or just write the image straight to disc.
With this completed, you’ll have a much slimmer Vista install that includes the latest hotfixes. Keep it safe and handy, or, if you fancy a new OS install, give it a whirl. If you’re not 100 per cent confident that things will go smoothly, you can always download Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and test your disc before committing it to a real machine. VPC 2007 is free, so what are you waiting for?
A few months ago, Microsoft released two beta hotfixes, KB938194 and KB938979, otherwise known as the ‘Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack’ and ‘Vista Performance and Reliability Pack’ respectively. Each hotfix addressed a variety of issues, but we’ve included the most important here.
938194 Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack
• Improves the performance in calculating the ‘estimated time remaining’ when copying/moving large files. Improves the performance when copying or moving entire directories containing large amounts of data or files.
• Improves the performance of Vista’s Memory Manager in specific customer scenarios and prevents some issues which may lead to memory corruption.
938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack
• Improved reliability and compatibility of Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
• Increased compatibility with many video drivers.
• Improved visual appearance of games with high intensity graphics.
A note to earlier users – there was an incompatibility with vLite and these hotfixes that prevented users from creating or renaming new folders, if they were applied to a ‘vLited’ install. As of vLite 1.1 beta, this issue
is resolved.