vLite with W7

S

ShadeZeRO

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 21, 2008
Messages
396
How many of you plan on optimizing W7 further?

or at least creating an unattended install?
 
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Me, but it will be a while, I like to take my time. fiddle for about 6 months. Then make a master list of how I like it. I then do a completely fresh install, update everything with minimal overhead (manually install drivers, etc.) make an image, install all software, refine some more, and then make a second image. Then I feel I am set until the next OS upgrade. Update the process at each SP.

By today's standards this might be overkill, but this was how I was brought up.
 
Is there even a version of vLite (or whatever they're going to rename it as) for 7 yet?
 
Stoly said:
WHY GOD!!!!, WHY!!!!! :rolleyes::rolleyes:
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I have to ask this very question. It amazes me that some people didn't figure out these tools were useless with Vista, and here we are three years later, with even less of a reason to use them. By the way, the install is pretty much unattended already. There's no reason to eneter a key during the install anyway, so why bother. Just install it, and follow the best tweaking advice there is....leave it alone.
 
Joe Average said:
Leave it alone.
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No way! I gotta run a defragmenter 3 times after a clean install, disable my page file, and repeat every 2 weeks or for any device installation, driver update, or major software update, whichever comes first. It's the only way to run your system and optimize the megahertz!!! :rolleyes::p
 
There are install tweaks and then there are usability tweaks.

Worlds apart. Customizing your shell and widgets/color/scheme etc is half the fun. If you reinstall the OS cleanly on a somewhat regular basis it would be worth it to automate this somewhat, no?
 
Yanno, when XP came out, given the state of technology, and the "power" of machines, CPUs, RAM, hard drives, video cards, it was actually advantageous to do some optimization, to remove some stuff that wasn't of any use that drained some level of resources, to tweak some services that could potentially have come into play to tap a little bit more resources, etc.

But this is nearly 10 years later. We have processors for $50 nowadays that have dual cores and are more powerful than anything that existed 10 years ago, even if you had a machine with 32 freakin' CPUs in it.

The whole concept of tweaking is now passe, really. Today's machines are so god damned inherently fast that this stuff is just ridiculous to even see it still being put to use, and I've been using nLite and vLite since before either of them were actual publicly available apps, having created hundreds of very "light" installations of XP for specific purposes.

But nowadays, if you did all that, if you tweaked everything possible, if you gutted out Windows 7 into something that easily fit on a 700MB CD will room to spare for a whole lot more, I seriously doubt you'd do much of anything except:

a) gain a few percentage points overall, and I mean a few, if that many, like less than 3-5%, and...

b) end up fucking up Windows 7 in the process because you're taking something that is a high performance (laugh if you want, I couldn't care less) computer OS that self-tunes to make itself even faster, automagically defrags when required, monitors itself, tells you when things go wrong (Reliability monitor), and many other things that no other computer OS has ever done before, on any architecture, or any platform... Linux, UNIX, FreeBSD, OSX, etc... all be damned. They all pale in comparison to what Windows 7 actually does and brings to the table...

Well, be my guest. You can proudly go around informing people of your "success" at gutting out Windows 7 while the rest of us that understand how things actually work just mumble stuff under our breath and laugh at you not only to your back but to your "public" face. :D

Sorry, just had to let that out...

Leave it alone should be stamped on every Windows 7 disc and box, and I almost wish it was self-aware enough to pull a H.A.L. 9000 move when you try to muck it up and alert you with:

"I'm sorry, but I can't let you do that..." or words to that effect. :p
 
Joe Average said:
Yanno, when XP came out, given the state of technology, and the "power" of machines, CPUs, RAM, hard drives, video cards, it was actually advantageous to do some optimization, to remove some stuff that wasn't of any use that drained some level of resources, to tweak some services that could potentially have come into play to tap a little bit more resources, etc.

But this is nearly 10 years later. We have processors for $50 nowadays that have dual cores and are more powerful than anything that existed 10 years ago, even if you had a machine with 32 freakin' CPUs in it.

The whole concept of tweaking is now passe, really. Today's machines are so god damned inherently fast that this stuff is just ridiculous to even see it still being put to use, and I've been using nLite and vLite since before either of them were actual publicly available apps, having created hundreds of very "light" installations of XP for specific purposes.

But nowadays, if you did all that, if you tweaked everything possible, if you gutted out Windows 7 into something that easily fit on a 700MB CD will room to spare for a whole lot more, I seriously doubt you'd do much of anything except:

a) gain a few percentage points overall, and I mean a few, if that many, like less than 3-5%, and...

b) end up fucking up Windows 7 in the process because you're taking something that is a high performance (laugh if you want, I couldn't care less) computer OS that self-tunes to make itself even faster, automagically defrags when required, monitors itself, tells you when things go wrong (Reliability monitor), and many other things that no other computer OS has ever done before, on any architecture, or any platform... Linux, UNIX, FreeBSD, OSX, etc... all be damned. They all pale in comparison to what Windows 7 actually does and brings to the table...

Well, be my guest. You can proudly go around informing people of your "success" at gutting out Windows 7 while the rest of us that understand how things actually work just mumble stuff under our breath and laugh at you not only to your back but to your "public" face. :D

Sorry, just had to let that out...

Leave it alone should be stamped on every Windows 7 disc and box, and I almost wish it was self-aware enough to pull a H.A.L. 9000 move when you try to muck it up and alert you with:

"I'm sorry, but I can't let you do that..." or words to that effect. :p
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fanboi ftw
 
that is the mistake everybody makes when they hear the word vlite. they think people use it just to decrease memory use. granted that is one reason some use it. but there are other purposes for it including slipstreaming service packs and updates and integrating drivers. plus unattended installs too. as long as you read the posts in the forums and know what you are doing it is a useful tool. to many try it to just see what it is and screw up and blame the program when it is their fault for not researching and asking questions before they screw up.
 
I guess that's why the OP specifically asked:

ShadeZeRO said:
How many of you plan on optimizing W7 further?
Click to expand...

We all know exactly what the OP is asking, what it implies, what the intentions are, etc - however his second question:

ShadeZeRO said:
or at least creating an unattended install?
Click to expand...

almost redeems the situation because vLite (and nLite) do offer those other benefits that hclarkjr just touched upon.

The simplest answer is: you're just wasting your time if you intend to gut Windows 7 "down" and you will end up doing more harm than good, more often than not by the procedure. If your intention is to create unattended installations, add drivers that don't exist in the installation media, etc those are all excellent reasons to use vLite as it will make doing such things much less problematic.
 
hclarkjr said:
that is the mistake everybody makes when they hear the word vlite. they think people use it just to decrease memory use. granted that is one reason some use it. but there are other purposes for it including slipstreaming service packs and updates and integrating drivers. plus unattended installs too. as long as you read the posts in the forums and know what you are doing it is a useful tool. to many try it to just see what it is and screw up and blame the program when it is their fault for not researching and asking questions before they screw up.
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WAIK.

OP asked, "How many of you plan on optimizing W7 further?".

That's what got my attention at least.
 
Joe Average said:
I guess that's why the OP specifically asked:



We all know exactly what the OP is asking, what it implies, what the intentions are, etc - however his second question:



almost redeems the situation because vLite (and nLite) do offer those other benefits that hclarkjr just touched upon.

The simplest answer is: you're just wasting your time if you intend to gut Windows 7 "down" and you will end up doing more harm than good, more often than not by the procedure. If your intention is to create unattended installations, add drivers that don't exist in the installation media, etc those are all excellent reasons to use vLite as it will make doing such things much less problematic.
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I just looked at the vLite Vista page and it looks like you need to download the MS tools that take care of all this in the first place. Is the Vista version just a front end to the MS tools? I don't really care to look because the MS tools get the job done already.

HAL 9000... That would be pretty funny.
 
No, you don't need the entire WAIK to use vLite, that's a mistake. The issue is that what people need is simply the WIM filter driver to access/read the data inside the WIM file. nuhi originally distributed that small single file driver along with vLite at first, but Microsoft dropped a hammer on him and forced him to stop it since that file is/was copyrighted software owned by them, so he pulled it. Realistically, they just don't want people hacking up Vista or Windows 7, nor XP for that matter because it has the potential of creating more problems for them...

While nuhi's instructions tell you to go off and grab that entire WAIK just to get that one single little driver, there are other methods of getting that one single little driver. Get that driver file, drop it in the vLite directory along with the app itself, then start it up and wham, you're all set, no WAIK necessary.
 
Interesting. Thanks for the info. vLite was useful for really customizing XP. I used it a few times but that was a loooong time ago.
 
I have to say, using vLite (on vista, haven't tried with 7 yet) was a lot easier/user friendly then using WAIK.
 
dx2 said:
fanboi ftw
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Let me guess, you probably still run XP. You're the kind of guy who would probably disable SuperFetch too.


Joe Average speaks the truth. Hell, even Vista was pretty self-efficient. 7 is even more self-efficient. People need to get this through their heads; XP IS DEAD. It's a dinosaur of an OS that needs to be retired. And take your XP ideologies with it.
 
Keiichi said:
Except for slipstreaming. I wish MS would make slipstreaming W7 as it was in XP.
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I'm actually really curious. What do you want to slipstream into Win7? I used to slipstream winxp drivers but now there's really no need for that....
 
^Drivers, hotfixes, official patches, service packs. Sure Slipstreaming isn't going to be a big deal now, but after going through four service packs (i.e. Win2K) and with new hardware coming out in the years to come, it wil be.
 
Either learn how to Windows Automated Install Kit (It's on Technet/MSDN) with answer files and sysprep.

I learned how to properly rollout a network containing completely different machines with Vista/Win7 and install hotfixes/drivers.

Also, learn linux if you want a "light" OS. Try Slackware/Slax. Heck, you can install it on a USB 1GB key and still have ~500+MB left.
 
Keiichi said:
^Drivers, hotfixes, official patches, service packs. Sure Slipstreaming isn't going to be a big deal now, but after going through four service packs (i.e. Win2K) and with new hardware coming out in the years to come, it wil be.
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Service packs are the only thing I could see it being useful for, but even then...
 
extide said:
Causes more harm than good IMHO.
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Stoly said:
WHY GOD!!!!, WHY!!!!! :rolleyes::rolleyes:
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Joe Average said:
Leave it alone.
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tesfaye said:
Agreed. Some folks just don't let old habits die.

FWIW, WAIK will allow you to customize your installation. The components and settings are very configurable this time around.
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soulesschild said:
He speaks the truth. Trying to remove stuff and customize Vista/Win 7 always led to disastrous results.
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veritas7 said:
Either learn how to Windows Automated Install Kit (It's on Technet/MSDN) with answer files and sysprep.

I learned how to properly rollout a network containing completely different machines with Vista/Win7 and install hotfixes/drivers.

Also, learn linux if you want a "light" OS. Try Slackware/Slax. Heck, you can install it on a USB 1GB key and still have ~500+MB left.
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THIS!

Don't do it! vlite "optimizations" oftentimes DO MORE DAMAGE/BAD THEN GOOD!
 
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