Vista Gamer? (Stripped version of Vista for gaming)

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belmicah

Gawd
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Oct 10, 2005
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I would like to see a version of Vista that isn't a resource hog, doesn't use like 512 Mb of RAM with no running programs, has Direct X 10, and doesn't ask permission to do everything.

I was reading the Maximum PC article on what versions will have what features, and it seems that I would probably get the feature rich home version (not basic) over ultimate(because I don't really need those other features). I only need the media center features, and gaming is a priority.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/editions/default.mspx

With all that in mind, who here thinks that they could strip Vista of all of its unnecessary services and build a nice gaming OS out of it, without sacrificing security and stability.

How would you do it?

I am inclined to believe that a lot of people are gonna be forced to upgrade, not only their hardware, but to this OS for Direct X 10, and aren't going to be happy about it.

Can a stripped version be burned to disk for installing? How can this Gamer Version be made?

I really want to do this for my next PC. I want a do it all HTPC gaming rig that will take over all functions of hardware in my living room without all the bogged down Microsoft sludge.
 
Right now I'm running Ubuntu. According to top, it's using 2 GB of my 4 GB. If I called Linux a resource hog, I'd have Duby and eeyjmyr in this thread in seconds.

From my experience, Vista scales its RAM usage very well. On my notebook with 1 GB of RAM, it uses 512 MB, most people here report 1 GB usage with 2 GB of RAM, and on my rig with 4 GB it uses about 2 GB. The memory usage isn't all bloat, it's agressive caching to improve performance. It's why, for the first time in a while, we have a Windows release which is actually faster than the previous one on most modern hardware.

UAC can be turned off, Aero disables itself whenever a game is started, and I've heard some developers say that DirectX 9 games are actually faster under Vista than XP. We'll know for sure once we get final drivers. I would advise, before you start stripping out processes and features on the advice of the misinformed, that you actually give gaming on Vista a try once we have some final drivers for video hardware.
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
*snip*
Click to expand...
He's exactly right. The RAM usage you see is windows caching it, not actually using it. It may seem weird to someone only familiar with Windows boxes, but this has been standard practice for a while now on other OSes. If you're running 2 dimms, try removing one and starting Vista. You'll see that it really only "uses" half of whatever is available and scales depending on how that number varies.

That said, I've been hoping for a stripped down version of windows for ages now. It comes with so much crap on the base install that I don't need and Vista is just making it worse. They definitely are catering to more general users which is fine, but I completely agree that there's definitely a market, albeit small, for a Windows OS that only has what's required for the most basic of operations.
 
It would be nice if there were a Win2000 emulation mode (or gaming mode) where you can simply toggle of the vista UI totally and unload running services that aren't needed with gaming in mind with no need for a stripped down OS but rather a way to just toggle on and off with one click EG "game mode".
 
Did you read *any* of the posts in this thread? All the "stupid effects" turn themselves off when you start a game.
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
Right now I'm running Ubuntu. According to top, it's using 2 GB of my 4 GB. If I called Linux a resource hog, I'd have Duby and eeyjmyr in this thread in seconds.
Click to expand...

sorry but can I ask how you have 2GB being used in Ubuntu, I have to work hard to push 1GB and even then it never touches swap. o_O
 
I use close to 2GB (out of 2GB) on my Ubuntu machine. If you have more than 10% or so of your memory free then the system isn't caching effectively.
 
I have 2Gb, so yeah thats why it never touch swap, but what are you guys running that uses all that ram??? I can push my system running three concurrent vmware machines at teh same time but never to the point where it uses all my ram.....
 
I haven't changed much on this system - just installed Saturday. It seems to be holding around 2 GB, but I've seen it use as much as 4.
 
hmmm.... thats weird because a fresh edgy install runs less then 200Mb on mine, and then with beryl and aiglx running I have run about 250-300MB, Idle.

when I run xubuntu I run beween 150-200MB, I dont see how you can be using 2GB of ram on a new unmodified ubuntu install. what does gnome-system-monitor tell you?? are you sure you are reading top right???
 
No it is not hogging it, it us caching it, unlike windows. You got the RAM, you might as well use it. In windows that is not the case.
 
Vista by itself with nothing else running claims to use 32% of my 2gig RAM. Its not actually using that much due to caching but thats what the reading indicates.

However, I always have my game shortcuts set to disable desktop theme and desktop composition (in compatibility tab) so the OS requires even less of my RAM when I load a game.

I have not yet disabled any Vista default services and have plenty of memory/performance for games.
 
duby229 said:
No it is not hogging it, it us caching it, unlike windows. You got the RAM, you might as well use it. In windows that is not the case.
Click to expand...

Until Vista, that is.

For what it's worth, I was asked by nuhi to "beta" test the 64 bit version of vLite (no, that doesn't mean it's a 64 bit Windows tweaking program, it just means a version of vLite that works on the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of the Vista RTM build).

I can remove quite a bit of stuff and have noticed no ill effects from it. While vLite still has a long way to go until it's anywhere near the kind of gutting that nLite can do for 2K/XP/2K3, it's primary design and usage right now is removing huge chunks of bloat in Vista.

I'm running Vista Ultimate 64 presently, the RTM build. The installation files as they exist on the DVD are about 3.53GB in size, 605 files, 111 folders. A clean install with no mods will end up around 12GB or so, give or take some space for a pagefile (I have 2GB of RAM) and a hibernate file which I then disable and remove - my laptop is on, or it's off, there is no middle ground. :)

Using vLite I can get that "original" install situation down quite a bit.

Removing the Language components (Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese) can reduce the size of the final install by over 1.2GB - seriously. I know I'll never speak those languages, so I certainly don't have a need for all that crap on my Vista install.

Removing the Printer drivers components knocks off another 825MB or so of files that I simply have no use for. HP currently doesn't have Vista drivers posted for the Deskjet D1320 el-cheapo printer I got at Wally World for $23.96 recently - but they do have an XP64 64 bit digitally signed driver from Microsoft that works just fine.

Movie and DVD Maker? Nice of Microsoft to think of me doing such things, but I don't - and if I did I wouldn't use the included tools in Vista. That's 220MB saved.

Screensavers? I have an LCD panel in the laptop (duh) and have no use for them, so I just use Blank or turn the LCD off instead. That's 65MB saved.

Speech Support. Yeah, right. As if... 675MB saved.

Tablet PC support - no need for it. 800MB saved.

There are roughly 90MB of wallpapers included in Vista. Ain't happening, but if I delete them (I can't pick and choose, it's either all or none) I might encounter crashes when logging in. That little "feature" has yet to be resolved in vLite but probably will at some point. Even so... 90MB... sheesh

The sample music thrown into Vista? 140MB? I've got 40 DVDs of mp3 files I hand ripped and hand tagged myself, thank you very much.

Windows Easy Transfer. Well, this is a dead one from the start since I have the *most* important stuff in a VM that is easily transportable between installs no matter how many times I start over with all my various Windows images. 100MB for a file and settings transfer doodad? No thanks...

WinSAT, that performance measuring tool in Vista? 65MB or so... but if you choose not to install it you lose out on any performance improvement tools in Vista, so this one I keep around.

Media Center...625MB or so... Hrmmm... I still use WinDVD 5 Platinum for all my DVD duties. It offers more goodies and abilities (and it does captioning and subtitles much better - my Wife is deaf so that's an absolute must have) but it doesn't work worth a damn in Vista soooo... guess I gotta stick with it or go out and buy a newer DVD playback application that's ready for Vista. Oh well.

All together, with the stuff I just mentioned and some other hardware related stuff - I remove all the drivers in Vista that get preinstalled because I have all of them taken care of already and that saves another 1.2GB (part of this is already counted because of the Printer drivers which take up the bulk of that 1.2GB amount) - I end up with an estimated size reduction of 4.9GB - that's a considerable drop in space and unnecessary (DISCLAIMER: "unnecessary for me" is what that means) files sitting around doing not much of nothing on my hard drive.

The resulting ISO file vLite creates is 1.78GB - nearly half the size of the original installation media on the DVD.

The resulting installation of that vLite ISO sucks down about 6.2GB - and that's without needing me to disable the hibernation support because vLite did it for me. Boot times are improved dramatically, and if I redo that vLite ISO to remove Search then all that constant disk thrashing for searching and indexing the hard drive is removed too.

Memory usage at the Desktop is about 60 to 70% of what a full Ultimate 64 install is: down to roughly 380MB or so instead of the 575-600MB; the number of services is decreased by 7.

So, it is most definitely possible to gut out a lot of the pig bloat that Vista has in it.

Makes you wonder why Microsoft has been taking the route of "Screw it, just install everything and if the user doesn't need it, most likely he/she will never even notice the <insert xxx amount of hard drive space here> missing..."

I notice. And I'm not alone... :D
 
That is exactly the kind of post I was looking for when I started this thread. Thank you for all the info. I abhore all unnecessary shit that leaves an OS bloated. I want to game, not spend days tweaking an OS to save a few megs hard disk space and RAM usage. I guess this is what I'll do next month for my new build.
 
My strongest possible suggestion:

Before you get truly serious about this, plan to do testing and a lot of it. Get VMWare server (free) or even VirtualPC 2007 which is in beta right now but free so that you can do these "test installs" when you create the stripped down Vista install ISO(s) instead of using your real main PC to do it. Saves time, trouble, hassles, etc.

If you can create a stripped out gutted Vista version that works with no issues under either VM application mentioned above, it'll most likely work well natively on the hardware.

Just my $.02...
 
belmicah said:
That is exactly the kind of post I was looking for when I started this thread. Thank you for all the info. I abhore all unnecessary shit that leaves an OS bloated. I want to game, not spend days tweaking an OS to save a few megs hard disk space and RAM usage. I guess this is what I'll do next month for my new build.
Click to expand...
In the days where HDDs are fifteen times what Vista requires for HDD space and where we have gigabytes of RAM, I really don't see how a few MB makes a difference, on any OS.
 
As I Lay Dying said:
hmmm.... thats weird because a fresh edgy install runs less then 200Mb on mine, and then with beryl and aiglx running I have run about 250-300MB, Idle.

when I run xubuntu I run beween 150-200MB, I dont see how you can be using 2GB of ram on a new unmodified ubuntu install. what does gnome-system-monitor tell you?? are you sure you are reading top right???
Click to expand...

Oh, and for you:
screenshotnr4.png

If I'm reading that wrong somehow, let me know.
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
In the days where HDDs are fifteen times what Vista requires for HDD space and where we have gigabytes of RAM, I really don't see how a few MB makes a difference, on any OS.
Click to expand...

Everything makes a difference, but to each his own. Some of us just love to see how far we can push the envelope - and for most of us, since we're not gonna be flying the Space Shuttle or shooting hoops with Michael Jordan or doing anything else risky and exciting in our lifetimes, we'll take what we can get moment by moment, even something like making our operating systems lean and mean.

For me and many others it's a learning process, nothing more. I know more about the inner workings of Vista than most of the people outside of Microsoft do, and that translates into more money for me when it comes to support calls that I'm already working on for a few business clients that have Vista Business already in hand.

But as I said, to each his (and her, sorry) own... YMMV
 
Great post bbzghost.

I have been playing with nlite, but am not entirely sure what can and cant go. I know the most important stuff is listed red, but there is alot of other stuff in there that sounds important, that I'm not too sure about. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us, it helps alot.
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
Oh, and for you:
If I'm reading that wrong somehow, let me know.
Click to expand...

try running gnome-system-monitor, if you are running gnome, I am not sure what the kde system monitor equivalent is.

that should give you a more accurate description of your memory usage, when I run top it shows that I use nearly all 2GB of my ram, but gnome-system-monitor, or setup conky, that will show you what more accurately how much ram you are using up. I am not sure as to what top is reporting, but there is no way you should be using that much ram on a new install. Also can I ask why you have a ~6GB swap, that excessive considering that you have 4GB of ram. With 4GB of ram you should be able to run Vista without a page file, infact some people will claim with 2GB of ram you can run Ubuntu without a swap partition.

edit top memory usage reports cached memory as well, cached memory however is more or less free ram, so when you run top, seeing a high cached memory used is good, but not 100% indicative of how much ram the other programs are using. A performance app like gnome-system-monitor or conky will tell you how much ram is actually being used.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/FAQ_Linux_Memory_Management

that explains more.

using 'free -m' will show you memory usage and the +/- line shows you how much is used up by programs and how much is available to them, so while top shows nearly all 2GB of my ram is used up, remember due to disk caching, 400-500MB is used up by programs, and 1500MB is free for use.
 
I only have 2gb of RAM and I have run Vista without a pagefile with no noticable effect on browsing, gaming etc. Im sure there are some applications that rely on page file more than the ones I use though.

I've also tried a small-ish page file and a 2gb SD card on ReadyBoost. That actually seems to improve certain types of application performance.
 
As I Lay Dying said:
try running gnome-system-monitor, if you are running gnome, I am not sure what the kde system monitor equivalent is.
Click to expand...

When I do that it says about 500 MB used. I knew that when I posted this.

As I Lay Dying said:
Also can I ask why you have a ~6GB swap, that excessive considering that you have 4GB of ram. With 4GB of ram you should be able to run Vista without a page file, infact some people will claim with 2GB of ram you can run Ubuntu without a swap partition.
Click to expand...

A while back I was told a good rule of thumb was to have your swap be 1.5 times your RAM. This was on an old Northwood with only 1 GB. I realize that mode of thought is antiquated, but if I'm that hard up for space, I'm managing my disks poorly.

As I Lay Dying said:
edit top memory usage reports cached memory as well, cached memory however is more or less free ram, so when you run top, seeing a high cached memory used is good, but not 100% indicative of how much ram the other programs are using. A performance app like gnome-system-monitor or conky will tell you how much ram is actually being used.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/FAQ_Linux_Memory_Management

that explains more.

using 'free -m' will show you memory usage and the +/- line shows you how much is used up by programs and how much is available to them, so while top shows nearly all 2GB of my ram is used up, remember due to disk caching, 400-500MB is used up by programs, and 1500MB is free for use.
Click to expand...

Still, when you run Vista, and hit ctrl-alt-del and look at task manager, it will say Vista is using 2 GB just like top says Ubuntu is using 2 GB. But if i go to the processes tab in Vista, I'll be lucky to find a process that's using more than an eighth of what task manager says is in use, and if the sum of all processes breaks a quarter. Yet when people quote Vista memory usage, they go for the more sensational value of physical memory used and attribute it to sheer bloat, rather than look at the fact that their processes are using a fraction of that.

I like the idea that either OS caches my disk for faster access. About time unused RAM actually did something rather than sitting around.
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
I like the idea that either OS caches my disk for faster access. About time unused RAM actually did something rather than sitting around.
Click to expand...

QFT!!! AMEN BROTHER!!! :D
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
A while back I was told a good rule of thumb was to have your swap be 1.5 times your RAM. This was on an old Northwood with only 1 GB. I realize that mode of thought is antiquated, but if I'm that hard up for space, I'm managing my disks poorly.
Click to expand...

well I was just pointing out, in case you want, or need the space.

Still, when you run Vista, and hit ctrl-alt-del and look at task manager, it will say Vista is using 2 GB just like top says Ubuntu is using 2 GB. But if i go to the processes tab in Vista, I'll be lucky to find a process that's using more than an eighth of what task manager says is in use, and if the sum of all processes breaks a quarter. Yet when people quote Vista memory usage, they go for the more sensational value of physical memory used and attribute it to sheer bloat, rather than look at the fact that their processes are using a fraction of that.

I like the idea that either OS caches my disk for faster access. About time unused RAM actually did something rather than sitting around.
Click to expand...

Ahh.... I see.....
 
Based on the info in this thread, I decided to look into Vista's memory manager. And from what little I could dig up, and the little knowledge I have on how memory management should work, it looks like MS completely rewrote the whole damn memory manager.

Not sure if this is true or not, but from the info I could find, it sure does seem that way, as well as the device manager, and the process manager, and they wrote a completely new kernel mode security manager as well.

Damn. I never really thought about how much work MS put into it. Based on what I found today, I'd say that Vista is prolly those most different between versions of Windows released yet, with the exception of 9x to nt.
 
duby229 said:
Based on the info in this thread, I decided to look into Vista's memory manager. And from what little I could dig up, and the little knowledge I have on how memory management should work, it looks like MS completely rewrote the whole damn memory manager.

Not sure if this is true or not, but from the info I could find, it sure does seem that way, as well as the device manager, and the process manager, and they wrote a completely new kernel mode security manager as well.

Damn. I never really thought about how much work MS put into it. Based on what I found today, I'd say that Vista is prolly those most different between versions of Windows released yet, with the exception of 9x to nt.
Click to expand...

Indeed. While on the surface it appears to only be cosmetic changes, there's a lot of compelling features under the hood.
 
Personally I hate Vistas interface. It really does suck. MS says it is easier to use..... I beg to differ.

I want my freakin file and edit menus right where they should be. I shouldnt have to freakin hunt for them, only to find out they are in a drop down that does nothing but add another layer, and make things more difficult. I hate clicking my way through a gui, please dont make it worse.....

In addition the black and gray look is simply ugly. The eye candy is nice, but the style sucks, and the color scheme is hideous. Not to mention that nasty icons. eww

On top of that it wont freakin leave me alone. Every time I click on anything, it asks if I really want to do that... OF COURSE!! Thats why I freakin clicked on it! I know it can be turned off, but that is besides the point

It's harder to use, uglier, and annoying to boot. I'm looking forward to new styles, and so on, and of course vlite to make it the way I want it.
 
duby229 said:
On top of that it wont freakin leave me alone. Every time I click on anything, it asks if I really want to do that... OF COURSE!! Thats why I freakin clicked on it! I know it can be turned off, but that is besides the point
Click to expand...

It's just not that bad so it would be nice if people would stop saying that. That's just going over the limit by making such statements and anyone that's used Vista at all knows it's simply not true, and I don't disable UAC nor do the tweak to elevate to Admin always either. It's just not that bad... so stop saying it is.
 
Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. I stated mine, and you stated yours.It seems to be stale mate.
 
i'll break the stalemate and just say that I think the style of Vista is pretty, but the design of the interface (lke menu design, how to find things), suckssss.

It would be really cool if MS just made a Windows XP interface for Vista. All the classic menus and shortcuts and functions, just with the new Vista look, to kill all semblance of a learning curve.

lol....that *would* be awesome.....


edit: I really didn't break the stalemate, did i? lol
 
duby229 said:
I want my freakin file and edit menus right where they should be. I shouldnt have to freakin hunt for them, only to find out they are in a drop down that does nothing but add another layer, and make things more difficult. I hate clicking my way through a gui, please dont make it worse.....
Click to expand...
I just wanted to chime in and say that when I heard they were taking the file menu out of IE7, I thought MS was nuts. But when I had a chance to use it, and Vista, I got used to the new way of doing things and really did find it easier. I didn't miss those menus.
 
You don't need a special gamer version of vista because vista does all of this already. When you play a game it shuts down all services and features that are not needed for that game.
 
duby229 said:
Personally I hate Vistas interface. It really does suck. MS says it is easier to use..... I beg to differ.

I want my freakin file and edit menus right where they should be. I shouldnt have to freakin hunt for them, only to find out they are in a drop down that does nothing but add another layer, and make things more difficult. I hate clicking my way through a gui, please dont make it worse.....

In addition the black and gray look is simply ugly. The eye candy is nice, but the style sucks, and the color scheme is hideous. Not to mention that nasty icons. eww

On top of that it wont freakin leave me alone. Every time I click on anything, it asks if I really want to do that... OF COURSE!! Thats why I freakin clicked on it! I know it can be turned off, but that is besides the point

It's harder to use, uglier, and annoying to boot. I'm looking forward to new styles, and so on, and of course vlite to make it the way I want it.
Click to expand...

I don't miss the file-edit-etc menus. Sure it's awkward trying to find where to go without them, but you very quickly adapt. Once I got used to it, I realized it is, in fact, much better (at least for me). In Word 2007 for example, I find the lack of file-edit-etc to be extremely awesome. I love that app.

The color scheme can be changed :)

As for UAC (the annoying as fuck thing), that can (and will) be disabled with every single user who has a clue how to. It was a good idea taken way, way too far. I bet it won't be in MS's next OS (possibly even in a Vista service pack), at least not in its current invasive-as-fuck form.

I am also looking forward to vLite being completed.
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
Did you read *any* of the posts in this thread? All the "stupid effects" turn themselves off when you start a game.
Click to expand...

Why run them at all?

It's too bad you can't just force the classic desktop on all of my users' desktops. Oh wait I can... already done. :cool:
 
Russell said:
Indeed. While on the surface it appears to only be cosmetic changes, there's a lot of compelling features under the hood.
Click to expand...

Under the hood changes are all I want. I am 100% happy with the interface as it is in 2000.

:)
 
You can also enable the file edit vew etc that are "missing" by default. I dont even use those menu's in IE personally so I dont miss them. They are still in the exact same place on any other window that is not IE7.

The UAC popups are a good thing but if you really dont like them go to security center and turn them off.

And yeah, if you followed the articles throughout Vistas development you'd see that Vista is not an upgrade of XP. Its a new OS with extremely different internals.
 
jtzako said:
You can also enable the file edit vew etc that are "missing" by default. I dont even use those menu's in IE personally so I dont miss them. They are still in the exact same place on any other window that is not IE7.

The UAC popups are a good thing but if you really dont like them go to security center and turn them off.

And yeah, if you followed the articles throughout Vistas development you'd see that Vista is not an upgrade of XP. Its a new OS with extremely different internals.
Click to expand...

I'll say this for the lack of file-edit-view menus - it'll be a real bitch doing tech support for the new IE. People know where file is, they don't know where the little arrow is beside tools off to the right. Man I'm glad I don't do tech support any more :)

UAC is, in theory, a good thing. But when a UAC window pops up every time you want to add or delete something from your fricking start menu, I call that overkill. As a security feature, it will not work as it asks questions when it is grossly unnecessary to do so. It can only work if it only occasionally asks questions instead of flooding the users for input constantly. Otherwise people will click yes and ignore them as they ignore warnings now.

I do like Vista, but I really REALLY don't like MS's implimentation of UAC.
 
Well they don't have much choice, it's either notify the casual user of everything or nothing at all, basically. And UAC simply does not ask you for permission for every single freakin' thing you do so please stop saying that bullshit. It's ridiculous when people keep perpetrating that myth.

I just added 4 things to my Start Menu and deleted two links; UAC did not ask me for any permission whatsoever, Vista just did what I told it to do.

As for the File-Edit menu in IE7, just press Alt. Voila!!! There it is. Press Alt again. Voila!!! There it isn't.

If you're wanting the old look (toolbars over the Address Bar) do the Reghack to get it working:

- Run Regedit
- Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser
- Add a DWORD value named ITBar7Position and give it a hex or decimal value of 1 (same result)
- Close Regedit
- Restart IE7

Now the toolbars appear over top of the Address Bar instead of underneath, which is more along the lines of "Classic IE."
 
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