Free utility condenses Windows Vista from 15GB to

[Capper]

Free utility condenses Windows Vista from 15GB to 1.4GB

A Croatian college student has created a utility that installs a seriously stripped-down Windows Vista, saying the heft of Microsoft's biggest desktop operating system is just too big to believe."Who can justify a 15GB operating system?" asked Dino Nuhagic, a fifth-year student from Split, a Croatian city on the Adriatic. Not Nuhagic, or the uncounted users who have turned to his creation, vLite.
The free program lets users pick and choose which Vista components, hot fixes, drivers, and even language packs are installed, then builds a disk image that can be burned to a DVD for unattended installation of the operating system.
"Why did I do it? Well, it's performance and work environment," Nuhagic said when asked why he came up with vLite. "Performance, that's easy to explain. The less things running, the more responsive the OS. But the environment part is where it gets down to personal preference."
Those preferences include options for leaving out virtually every component of Windows Vista, from the minor -- such as the bundled screensavers -- to the major, such as the firewall or Universal Plug and Play.
Some vLite users, in fact, have made it a contest of sorts to come up with the puniest-possible installation package for the operating system. While Microsoft recommends that users set aside 15GB of hard-disk space to install its pride and joy, Nuhagic's fans boast of squeezing it into an image file as small as 515MB that takes up just 1.4GB on the hard drive.
One user reported condensing Windows Vista Home Basic into a 526MB ISO file and installing it in a virtual machine that used just 1.3GB of drive space. "It worked well inside the virtual machine, and since I have 1GB of RAM on the host, I guess the little Vista would work well," said amocanu.
Nuhagic didn't come right out and say it, but he hinted that he -- like more critical users and pundits -- thought Vista was bloated and could use some reducing. "To be frank, I don't need 90 percent of Windows. But that 10 percent, which guarantees that you can run [the] majority of games out there, is what is worth isolating."

Free utility condenses Windows Vista from 15GB to 1.4GB

[Stormcrow]

Downloading this right now, ooooh yeah.

[Dr. V]

I wonder...does Vista retain its core graphic content? Aero is a really key component for me with Vista...I wouldn't want that or any Direct X 10-related aspects (for gaming, etc.) to be affected.

[Stormcrow]

Apparently you can strip anything out of the install, but like you said DX10 is core and I doubt it'd be possible to extract it. In any event, I'll give this thing a whirl sometime in the next week, might make a good article to write up on.

[azianai]

is he the same person that created nLite for Windows XP? I use nLite since my copy of XP Pro is SP1 version, so everytime I'm installing i gotta update SP2, instead i've just slipstreamed SP2 and canceled a bunch of the stupid default settings for XP install. Highly recommend it if vLite works the same as nLite. I tried to do this but my Vista disk is actually just the Anytime upgrade that has all the versions of Vista on it lol, stupid HP shipped me their bloatware recovery disk, and microcenter couldn't get it in their thick skulls the 64 bit Vista is sold same as the 32 bit one (they wanted 30 more for the 64 bit). I just basically bought the 32 bit for the CD Key and just use my Anytime upgrade for all OS installations now. Kinda continent to have all 4 versions of vista available.

[polobunny]

I know Panda used vLite to strip his Windows installation and remove the stuff he won't ever use.
Back in the days I also used nLite to strip my Windows installation. The problem with doing so is that sometimes, you remove stuff you think you will never use, but you end up using it. Sometime you can go in add/remove programs (in Windows XP case) and add the components, but sometimes what you remove is not normally user serviceable. You end up with a crippled build, missing a component you need and the only way to solve it is to re-install.
Overall though, when you settled up for some decent settings it's possible to shave a nice amount on your OS which takes less ressources overall.