Removing Unneeded Drivers and Services From Windows

DayTrader

DayTrader

New Member
While reading around on here and other forums, I've seen where some people will "trim" Windows down to a very small size by removing certain things from it. I'm interested in learning more about this because I'm sure there are many unused things within Windows that I could get rid of. The only problem is I don't know where to begin as far as figuring out what is needed to make my system run properly and what is not. Is there any list of common items that are routinely removed by computer performance junkies? I use my computer to run one, maybe two programs for work and that's all. Also, how can I make my install disc to install Windows in this clean state rather than removing it all after it's been installed? I assume slipstreaming but not sure how doing that can accomplish this. Any advice on this is much appreciated!
 
Some tutorials posted on the internet about stopping XP Services, and a program called nlite can remove features of a Windows Install Cd to allow a New Install CD to be made.

I probably made about 50 nlite CDs in XP from stripping out everything the program would allow, to just a few tweaks.

In the end with the size of Hard Drives today reducing the install size by a few hundred Megs is not really worth the effort any more.

The lean XP installs didn't really run any better, and in fact some seemed more buggy. I was surprised that some functions of XP stopped working for example when IE was removed.
 
With today's powerful computers there is no need to play with any of those.
What for? To save couple of miliseconds of a boot time?

All you need is to control your startups, which produce most of services and processes.
All others are better left alone, unless you're serious computer geek.
 
Thanks for the replies. My main reason for wanting to do it is because I am thinking about buying an SSD, but I can't afford a very large one. And unfortunately, the main program that I use in my work doesn't allow me to save data to a separate drive, so it would have to be saved on my SSD. It's not much data but it adds up over time. I was thinking if I could make my OS smaller that I would have more room to store data on my SSD. Oh well, I think for now I'll hold off buying an SSD until prices come down and I can afford a larger one.
 
Using an SSD drive for your data isn't cost effective. You would want to use an SSD drive as your boot drive.
 
Yea I planned to use it as my boot drive, but unfortunately the program I use stores its data only on the drive on which it's installed, which would be the boot drive. Anyways, I've decided against an SSD for now. :)
 
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