hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0150.txt

Episode: 150
Title: HPR0150: Debloat Windows
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0150/hpr0150.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 12:28:06

---

music
Welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
This is CyberCod and today I'm going to talk to you about how to de-blow your windows
install disk.
We all know the windows is full of unwanted unnecessary bloat and security holes.
I can't really tell you much about the security holes, but chances are you already know how
to deal with that if you're listening to HPR.
On the other hand, getting rid of the bloat, that's very doable.
Start off, you'd go to www.nlightos.com, that's n-l-i-t-e-o-s.com.
Download and install the program.
Now be warned you have to have .NET Framework 2.0 installed, as well as any dependencies
that might need.
This works for Windows 2000 and 2003, as well as all versions of Windows XP.
You'll want to have about a gig and a half of free space before you start this project.
You put in your Windows CD and you start up in light, select your language and browse
of the CD.
Then you select a folder to copy the files from the CD to the hard drive.
As you might see, the presets page, but I'll explain more about that later.
Next you'll come to the task selection screen.
Here you can decide all the things that you would like to do to your install desk, including
such things as an integrate service packs, hot fixes add-ons, updates, and even drivers.
You can remove components and services, or you can set your disk up for unattended installs,
change a variety of options, or add in a bunch of tweaks to make it a little bit more power
user-friendly.
And lastly create a bootable ISO of your customized install.
If you're going to integrate a service pack, I suggest going in and grabbing it ahead of
time so that you're prepared.
If you forgot to do this, there are links within the program to take you to Microsoft's
website to grab your service pack.
I leave getting past the Windows genuine advantage up to you.
Integrating drivers allows you to customize your disk for a particular machine and it makes
for a really easy install.
If your drivers are zipped up, or they're in any XE, you want to make sure to extract
them first.
To integrate your drivers, simply click the insert button, and then browse where your
drivers are stored.
You can select your drivers individually, or ultimately you can select an entire folder.
Once you've found your way to your drivers, select the INF file, and Enlight will automatically
add them to the install.
If you've had problems installing Windows XP due to a lack of SATA drivers, this is
not necessarily going to fix that problem.
While this will add the SATA drivers to the install disk, it's not necessarily going
to make them available during the text mode portion of the install process.
You'll want to search out and find instructions for your particular hardware, as far as installing
SATA drivers goes.
There are ways to do it, but sometimes it's a little bit more messy than using this program.
Next up is the compatibility screen.
On this screen, check the checkboxes next to the function that you wish for your Windows
installation disk to keep.
Whether you've selected all of the functions that you wish to keep, click OK, and those
functions will be outlined in red, letting you know not to remove those if you wish to
keep that particular functionality.
Next up, you'll have the screen where you can remove components, and this is where most
of the work of de-bloting Windows comes in.
On the components screen, check the boxes next to the features that you wish to remove.
You can get rid of the accessibility options, briefcase, games, handball, wordpad, basically
anything that you want.
You can get rid of drivers, you can get rid of the help system, you can get rid of Internet
Explorer.
Anything that you don't want in your install, this is the place to take it out.
Also a great place to get rid of a bunch of services.
Though I do advise, look up the services that you're proposing to remove before you
remove them, because some of them might do some stuff that you're not quite sure of, and
after you've done major install disk and installed it, you find that you need that service,
it's going to be a little bit too late.
This is also where you can get rid of the docs, support, and value add directories from
your CD.
If you're installing SATA drivers, you might want to copy these folders off to your
drive, because there's a few tools in there that are necessary for installing text mode
SATA drivers in order to install onto a SATA disk.
But after they're copied and you have those tools available, there's no point in keeping
them.
After you've selected all of the components you wish to remove, hit next and you'll
come to the unattended screen.
On the unattended screen, there's tons of things you can do to make your windows installation
a lot easier.
You can insert your product key so that you don't have to put it in.
You can also enable or disable system restore or set the amount of disk space that it uses.
You can have it hide pages that you don't want to use or provide defaults so that you
can just click next and get through the installation quickly.
You can also create commands that will be run on the very first time the computer boots
up after installation.
You can add default users.
You can even go ahead and set up the network ID on the owner.
If you know that no one else is going to be using this CD, you can go ahead and set
the region in the time zone as well.
You can set the desktop theme.
You can turn off automatic updates, change the default color display.
You can also rename your program files directory to something else like just programs or bin.
You can customize the directories on your install disk to make it seem more like Linux
or Unix or whatever you're used to.
While it won't be 100% exactly like it, it'll feel a little bit more like home.
Once you're finished here, click next to get to the option screen.
On the option screen, there's a few options to make things a little better.
You can remove the requirements for hard drive space and the minimum memory requirement,
allowing you to install it on older machines that with less than 128 megs of RAM.
You can also set the install to have a classic look in a black background and get rid of
the lion crap that Windows usually says there as far as how it's going to run better than
the last version did.
This is also where you set your Windows path and your profiles path as well as your temporary
folder.
Once you've selected all of the options that you wish to change, click next and you'll
get to the tweaks screen.
A lot of the tweaks here are contained in the tweaks UI program.
So if you've used that before, some of these will be familiar.
Things you can do is change the desktop icon size, decide whether Internet Explorer icon
or my computer, my documents, my network places, or the cycling bin icons are on the desktop.
You can show the Windows version on the desktop.
You can also change whether NumLoc is on or off, use a classic login page or the welcome
screen, as well as a lot more stuff.
There's really a lot in there, so take your time and really check that out.
One thing that I found really useful is you can add more options to the right-click menu
of my computer, allowing you to get to add and remove programs or services or a lot of
things with just two quick clicks.
If you're pretty sure you're like how everything is set up, now is a good time to
save a preset.
What a preset allows you to do is to take someone else's Windows disk and apply the same
changes to it.
Now, you might want to go in and make sure to change the CD key, but otherwise everything
else you should be able to keep just like you have it now.
If you hit next at that point, it'll ask you if you want to start the process.
This will go through and apply all of the changes that you've been selecting.
If there's anything you think you might want to do differently, now's the time to go
back and change it.
When you're sure that you're ready to go, start the processing and sit back and wait
for it to finish.
It can take a different amount of time depending on how much you've customized it, so be prepared
to wait a little while.
Next up, you find this screen where you create the bootable ISO.
Well, wait.
Don't just hit burn right away.
One of the cool things about this is that since you've removed so much space from the
install disk, you can fill that space up with your own special installs of the programs
that you normally use.
So click explore and go into the disk, create a folder for your installs.
Copy all of your installs that you wish to make part of the disk into that folder.
Keep an eye on the file size of the folder to make sure that you don't go over 700
megs.
Another cool thing you can do here is with special folder names, you can have a certain
folder copied to the drive.
If you make a folder, dollar sign, OEM dollar sign, and then to make a subfolder in that
dollar sign one, then any subfolder from that folder will be copied to the drive upon
installation.
You'll see it happening right after the disk partitioning before the reboot.
So all of your installs will be on the drive and accessible immediately after the install,
and you can go about setting up your security applications and anything else you think you're
going to need.
When you feel like you're ready to go, you can set the default disk label to something
else, and then click make ISO.
It'll spit out an ISO that you can easily burn to a disk, and there you go.
You've got your custom Windows install disk that you made your very own self.
There's a program for doing this with Bista called VLite.
I'm not familiar with that as I'm not a Vista user, but if you would like to check it out,
you can find it at www.vlite.net, V-L-I-T-E dot net.
For more information on how to modify your Windows installation disk, including changing
the text on the billboards, visit www.msfn.org or unattended.msfn.org.
I hope you've enjoyed the podcast, and have a great day.