Discovered Windows 7 Build 6801 to be the least RAM-using 7 there is.

Hi all, just wanted to share a small discovery I have made in the hope that it will helpful.

Windows 7 Build 6801 seems to to use the least RAM of any "standard" (Unedited, official release) Windows 7 version there is. Disabling the Windows Update and Defender services brings RAM usage down to <330mb average. For comparison, 7 Starter with the same two services disabled is somewhere above 400mbs usage consistently.

townsbg said:

Just to point out that this is a pre-beta release of 7 so it can be highly unstable. Secondly, since Microsoft put a cap on how long such versions can be used (which we will be well past by now) there is a very good chance that any such installs have been hacked and that can result in a malicious hacker spying on you. I would not use it outside of a virtual machine and even then I wouldn't do much with it.

True, there is a risk of instability which I should have mentioned in the OP. As for the cap ("timebomb"), it can be disabled forever using a simple notepad script, allowing the correct time and date to be set without problems.

You could always strip 7 down with NTLite. Perhaps strip Starter down with NTLite. Something I want to do for my Netbook. The Netbook runs Starter, but I'd like to see how it'd perform after NTLite strips more crap from it. I need to use Windows otherwise I'd just install Damn Small Linux or something.