nLite

[sas550]

Has anybody tried nLite? (Lets you customize an xp installation)

I have six pc's to drive my cockpit and it would be interesting to hear if there's any gain by ripping down xp to what's only needed for every pc's specific function.

Ie, one pc for the cdu shouldn't need more than the gfx and ethernet drivers.

Please let me know your impressions if you've tried it.

[rottenlungs]

Hi

Yeah I`ve used it a fair bit. I create an nlite xp disk for each of my pcs (two pc`s for FS, 1 server in the attic and the laptop for the Mrs) which would typically contain RAID drivers as well as sp3 (my original xp pro disk is very old ). I then load as many patches as I can. I generally add mobo and network card drivers, though I leave the video and audio drivers off as they are constantly being updated.

You can also customise the install, in terms of removing windows components and creating a user.

It`s easy too, just make sure you have space for a couple of full disks worth of ISO when building.

Cheers

James

[sas550]

Hi and tnx for your reply. What about performance? Did you notice any differance?

[mauriceb]

Has anybody tried nLite? (Lets you customize an xp installation)

I have six pc's to drive my cockpit and it would be interesting to hear if there's any gain by ripping down xp to what's only needed for every pc's specific function.

Ie, one pc for the cdu shouldn't need more than the gfx and ethernet drivers.

Please let me your impressions if you've tried it.

I would bet any money that it would not make any difference at all except on the main FS PC. Just look at the System Idle Process on all other PCs. I'd be surprised if idle time was less than 99% most of the time.


Maurice

[rottenlungs]

For me nlite wasn`t directly about performance. All the tweaks (removal of services / unwanted components etc) can be achieved without making a slipstreamed install cd. Where it was handy for me was integrating a basic set of drivers in order to expedite reinstalls of windows. Especially RAID drivers, now that more and more motherboards do not support floppy drives.

The benefits of nlite are realised as long as you don`t make the install too specific. For instance I built an XP SP2 + patches install cd that contained RAID drivers for all three of my RAID capable PC`s. I also included ethernet drivers as I like to get online to install the latest chipset drivers early in the process of building up a new rig.

Worked a treat until SP3 came along. Now I need to create a new one!

Maurice is right (and this is not a nlite specific thing) that unless the PC is working hard, removing unwanted processes etc doesn`t really make much difference. However, some people report hesitations caused by unusual process interactions even on low-loaded machines so I believe in removing the unwanted bloat even on the idlers.

Cheers

James