Guide to trimming W7 down as much as possible?

Well this is what i've discovered so far....

I've tried keeping the changes to a minimum (using build 7057 x64). On one occasion i removed 'Help', on another occasion I removed a language.

For both examples, installation went ok but when I right-click on the Desktop to access 'screen resolution' or 'personalize', I get this:



Assuming that vLite had messed with explorer.exe, I tried replacing it in install.wim after vlite has done its thing. I did this for the copy in both the Windows folder and SysWOW64...so they should be untouched. No luck, however.

I don't know enough to understand what's going on here...

I tried asking for help on the vLite forum but, because they consider 7057 to be warez, no discussion is allowed.

Any ideas?

Why not try vLighting build 7000 (this IS allowed on the vlite forum) and then "modelling" this for your 7057 build.

There won't be a HUGE amount of difference in the core functionality.

Another possibility is to simply try to "Upgrade" your vlited version of build 7000. I'm not sure if the "Upgrade" would add the removed features back again.

BTW I think you are better off using build 7048 -- it sems snappier (both 32 and 64 bit versions) than 7057.

Note however IE has changed across the builds. The current release level is IE 8 included in build 7057. This would also imply that explorer.exe itself has changed as well so maybe "modding" a 7000 build and upgrading might be the best solution and the manually removing any features you don't want that have been added.


Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Why not try vLighting build 7000 (this IS allowed on the vlite forum) and then "modelling" this for your 7057 build.

....

Another possibility is to simply try to "Upgrade" your vlited version of build 7000. I'm not sure if the "Upgrade" would add the removed features back again.

....

This would also imply that explorer.exe itself has changed as well

Thanks for your suggestions Jimbo....but there have been no problems in slimming down build 7000 or 7048 - I have managed to cut the ISO down to about 2GB for both these OS's.

Yes, I think you're right....explorer.exe has changed in this build.

I've considered trying to upgrade from my current vLited 7048 but I thinking that if vLite doesn't work for 7057, we'll have no chance slimming down the final product

After playing around with this for a while, I'm pretty sure vlite cannot be used on build 7057 x64. However, it does work on x86.