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#21
Ahhh... I've glanced at that but never found the patience to weed my way through it. With Win7 I'm taking a somewhat different tactic than before. This OS seems a lot more "tangled" (everything needs something else) than XP was so I'm just going to dump the bloatware (Speech recognition, Natural Language, Languages, Media Center, etc.) that I'll never use and integrate better video and audio drivers and run a more or less "Box Stock" version. I'll sort it out and turn things on or off after the install. This might mean a second install down the road, but for now this seems the best way to handle things.
They weren't kidding when they said "Win 7 is different"... It's actually quite the learning curve.
With XP it was the only way to go... pull out all those hundreds of drivers you'll never use and integrat the ones you will. Slipstream the latest service pack and install... I've done that many times. Sometimes to the point where the OS would only work on 1 specific machine... and boy does that bring big improvements!
I'm not so sure this is the case with win7. Or maybe it's just that I don't know enough about it yet... in any event yes, slipstreaming and install reduction have been standards of mine since win2000 SP1. I've done it hundreds of times over the years for some very happy friends and friends of friends...
Of course we'd both be remiss if we didn't acknowledge that over-doing this can backfire on us... I've "nlited" more than one non-functional version of XP in my day.