Langa: A New Way To Slim Down Windows XP, Including SP2 (May interest Windows XP users)

TechWeb - Security Pipeline ^ | Nov. 8, 2004 | Fred Langa

[Eagle9]

I don't use WinXP. I've noticed a lot of people posting threads asking for help with XP and/or SP2, and thought that some might find this article to be of some help.

[Cacique]

Thank you, will look into it.

[Eagle9]

My pleasure, Cacique. I hope all is well with you.

[floridarolf]

If you remove the Internet Explorer you can't update Windows anymore. As for the few MB saved: who cares given todays harddisk sizes. Such tools were useful a few years ago but not today.

[Oschisms]

Bump for later perusal

[AmericaUnited]

Unless you're trying to update an old laptop...

[protest1]

Agree about the space saving, but would it improve speed? If it can make my 98SE system significantly faster it might be worth it.

[floridarolf]

I used it on 98SE a few years ago myself. I don't think speed was improved noticeably. It can only improve speed if you remove memory resident parts and especially on Win 98 there isn't a lot memory resident. If you don't use Internet Explorer as your browser you might want to give it a try. For Win 98 you can download all the updates as exe files and therefore don't need to access windowsupdate with your Internet Explorer. But keep in mind that you might trade in a minimal speed improvement with reduced stability and security. I wouldn't do it.

On Win XP people are better off stability- and security-wise if they just turn off unneeded services instead of deleting system files.

[LiberalBassTurds]

Thanks Eagle. Just used XPlite to test it out. Cut about 800mb of things I never use. So far it's stable and everything works fine.

Two quick thought. First, you'd better know what you're doing or this tool will cause you problems. If you aren't well versed in the guts of the OS stay away from this. Second, there's benefit to being able to completely remove components that are exploitable...I.e. remote registry.

Good post. Thanks!

Thanks for the logo Safrguns!

[PhotoFixer3]

I don't see whats the fuss is about, i have over 200GB's of space... even if I totally gutted XP like he did I will only gain 800MB and lose functionality... not worth it, Tell this guy to get a bigger hard drive and a faster processor :)

[Riley]

Right you are.

For those among us who would like some good info on what services do what and what should be left alone and why, may I suggest a visit to Black Viper's page:

http://www.blackviper.com/

[LiberalBassTurds]

Hiya PF3.

The only benefit, from a disk space perspective, is for those folks who have their drives partitioned tightly. Once you've got them sized it's risky to try to resize on the fly. I have 3.5gb allocated for XP and over time with the addition of programs, upgrades, etc. the available space slowly dwindles down to nothing. This buys me some headroom until I build my next box and redo the partitions.

I'm off to bed. Night buddy. :^)

Thanks for the logo Safrguns!

[goldstategop]

There's no way to uninstall Internet Explorer. Of course if you have AOL - guess what - I.E gets reinstalled so you're right back where you started. Why bother?

[shteebo]

Yes, I agree. Much better idea to spend the money on more disk space instead, which is really not that expensive. They don't put those tools in there if they are never needed. This is like removing your spare tire to reduce weight.

[Wingy]

Bump for later...

[Dec31,1999]

I've got a Windows XP 'puter in a box to be set up later. Right now, I'm lovin' my Win '98 old one, which I'd almost left for dead 'till I discovered Hijack This and Zone Alarm. This baby never worked so good! HT got rid of the spy-ware and other offending files, and ZA keeps the rest out!

[SoFloFreeper]

Sounds like an awful lot of work to save a half a gig. I mean, if you've got a 120, 80, 40 gig hard drive, is the money and time really worth it?

[Dec31,1999]

You can delete IE (almost) by using "find" and then delete. I recommend downloading Flashpeak slim Browser in its stead; it will support anything that Mozilla Firefox will not. You can have as many browsers on your desktop as you like, BTW, for those of you who may not know.

[Caipirabob]

Immaculent timing. I'm working on bringing up a new home PC this weekend. My experiences with XP in general are that I seem to discard as much of the system as possible. This new box has an annoying "securty center" I intend to kill shortly.

It'll take a few days to straighten it out and transfer files. I'll check out this software.

Thanks!

[the crow]

sick of ms bump