All you need is the nLite application, and a Windows CD. You will need to copy the contents of the CD to your hard drive, where the modifications you select will be made to the folder. Once you are done, you can pack it all up into an iso file, or burn directly to a CD. the CD will be bootable and you can install Windows without any problems whatsoever.

There are heaps and heaps of options in there, and the interface is very helpful, so if you’re not a computer whiz you can still use it. You can select groups of things you definitely need at the beginning, and the application won’t let you remove those. In addition, potential problems are highlighted, and almost every item has a good description, so you can find what is needed and not needed pretty easily.

You can also choose to integrate a service pack, and since I only have an SP2 CD, this saves me the trouble of always having to wait ages for Microsoft Update to get and install it. You need to download the SP exe file, just point to it, and it will be integrated (slipstreamed). You can also download and add hotfixes the same way, and you can add drivers as well, pretty impressive.

What makes this all a delight to use is that CD burning and iso creation is built right in. You can also save your profiles, add extra folders to the CD, choose unattended install options, set up some basic Windows options before install (showing known file types, user accounts and so on), all in all, the application is extremely extensive. Also, if you need the same functionality, but you have Vista, you can use vLite, by the same team, created for Vista.

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That’s were vlite comes into play. It can removed unwanted features and programs from Windows installation disks. This is a process that happens before the actual installation and you should note that it could lead to troubles with the installation of future Service Packs and patches from Microsoft. A Reverser Integration Guide is available at Winbeta.

Still, if you want to give this a try to save hard drive space and probably gain performance as well you’ve come to the right place. The first steps are to select the DVD drive that contains the Windows Vista installation DVD and a destination folder for the new ISO file that you are going to create.

Files are then copied to that new location and a screen called Task Selection appears. You basically select what you want to do here. The options are the following:

• Integration: integrate, that means add, patches, drivers and service packs and the like to the installation
• Components: Remove unwanted components that you do not need. Those components will not be included in the new installation DVD and will not be installed.
• Tweaks: A handful of helpful tweaks. You can turn off UAC – user account control – for instance.
• Unattended Setup: Automates the installation. The user has to enter several information like the product key during installation. This setting lets you enter those information before which means they will be burned to the DVD as well and you do not have to enter them during installation.
• Bootable ISO: If you want a bootable DVD enable this setting.

Go through each entry and add or remove components that you do not need. Dependencies are shown during selection and once you leave that menu which means you get a warning whenever you are missing a function or program that is important for another one that you want to keep. Make sure you click on Apply when you are finished to rebuild the DVD.

A pretty basic installation DVD that I created saw a file reduction of more than 5 Gigabytes, that’s amazing don’t you think ?

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If you go into the Control Panel in Windows Vista you will not find Add / Remove Programs like in Windows XP and there is also no SYSOC.INF file where you can remove the HIDE parameter to add more windows components to the Add / Remove Programs menu.

The function in Windows Vista is called Turn Windows Features on or off and is available in the Programs and Features menu. There is however a huge difference. You might have noticed the on or off phrase and that is exactly what is happening. The component is not uninstalled and still on the hard drive if you select to turn a feature off.

There is only one known way to remove Windows components permanently and that would mean to prepare a special installation DVD with vlite. This means lots of work however and most users will not feal it is worth it.

You can however remove lots of Windows components this way including the Windows Firewall, Windows Media Player and Windows Mail.

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Next in line is a new version of CCleaner which supports not Microsoft Vista. It received some bug fixes and several routines have been optimized. CCleaner makes it pretty easy to delete all those temporary files and traces that many applications seem to create. Delete internet cache, history, cookies and much more with the click of the mouse button.

Vlite is a very interesting application for Windows Vista. It lets you uninstall components of Windows Vista that can’t be uninstalled by default resulting in a smaller and faster system. You can also create a image file of Windows Vista with removed components which is helpful when you reinstall the operating system.

Well those have been the most interesting ones. If you think something is missing from this small list let me know.

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You have to copy Vista from your DVD to your hard drive. Once that is done you load the folder in Vlite and it will be automatically analyzed. Once that is done you may click on the Components tab which displays many programs that you may choose to remove from the installation. Hovering over one entry displays some short lines about its purpose. The red entries should only removed with caution because removing them will have side effects that are explained in the text.

Components are sorted in categories like Drivers, Multimedia and Games. Once you mark a feature for removal the size will be displayed. Removing the Movie and DVD maker for instance reduces the size by 200 megabytes. (uncompressed I assume).

My test run had a estimated size reduction of 3843 megabytes. Afterwards you have the option to either apply the changes without rebuilding the installation files or with rebuilding them. The difference is that the first method will not decrease the size that Vista takes on the DVD whereas the second method removes the files from the installation thus creating a reduzed image. This does not affect the installation of Vista though, it does not matter if you choose method 1 or 2 the software that you have selected to be removed will not be installed during installation.

The result of the procedure was that I had a final size of the Vista folder that was close to Cd size. The final size was 990 megabytes. I did not try to install this image because I’m quite happy with the fact that my current one is working but I suppose it should not be a problem at all.

Please note that you need the .net framework and two additional components which are checked and installed when you first run the program.

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