ISO Size Reduction

I don't understand why he compacts the entire disk after install, since run-time perf would suck.
 
28,605 YouTube views can't BE WRONG :mad:

who is wrong then, him or me? its just 2 different ways of doing things. i prefer my way :)

that video has 6730 views with 274 updoots. only 274 updoots out of 6730 views? that aint a lot.

i made some custom OS before in my early years, and shared with couple of people, it was so popular because it was not giving any errors and it was stripped from annoying uwp apps etc... it was friction of what i can do today. People are easily influenced/hyped because they have no idea about these issues. If i make a win11+win10 combo under 1gb i'm sure i will be popular in lots of forums, but that iso will be piece of sh*t.

also for me the indicator of quality iso means;
*no left overs from your actions (like that guy left presets inside)
*should use post setup commands in a professional way, prefebly manually placed inside scripts folder instead of leaving oem folder exposed.....
*also os creator should think, if removing a feature/service/component. also manually remove its .lnk files that starts that thing. or else its crap for me. rightclick>send to menu is a example for this.
*functioning without any errors when someone tries to launch install edit something that you did not think of

also, ram is there, so use it. a computer that doesnt use ram is wasted potential.

AeonX ;) :cool:.
iso size dont mean beanz :p, it only serves as an indicator of potential, potential performance gains and potential nightmares.
i only ever quoted install size with my presets and always provided screen grabs for proof.
It’s not the size, mate, it's how you use it. ;)
 
ram is there, so use it. ,,,,,,
some time back a user wanted a slim OS because his device, tablet or whatever, only had 2gb(if i remember correctly, might have been 4) and it was soldered onto the mainboard and he was FoL on ram upgrades.

stuff costs AeonX double what i would pay for something. crucial ram(ballistix) is at very good prices for sometime, £38 for 8gb single ballastix. for 98% of what i do 8gb is enough but the 16gb upgrades i got recently are insurance incase what i do tomorrow changes.

remember the thailand floods a few years back that kiboshed hdd production and overnight(and instock grrrrrrrrr) items doubled/tripled in price?
i have seen ram prices go from "oo sweet" to "you can shove that right where the sun dont shine".

there are various reasons to have a machine low to middle spec and with that you have to get as many resource savings as you can. its something i always had and when funds increased i didnt lose that habit.
 
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Please first ask yourself "Why is your goal "reducing iso"?" Are u trying to reduce the footprint of windows? Or is it completely experimental?

1) You can use "Lite" preset in the components page.
2) You can set to "Custom" on updates page.
3) You can ReUseDriverCache on drivers page.
4) You can remove the languages and drivers you don't need on components page if its not removed completely by Lite preset.
5) On Apply Page, Select For ESD Compression and Remove NonEssantialEditions, like all of them.

And i can assure you, this will be the smallest size you will ever get. But as every windows shared on internet in named as "performance edition, lite, super duber perfect windows etc clown shows", this one will be the same. I mean NonUpdatable, and will most likely have lots of compatibility issues since you will be removing nearly everything, without checking for what your softwares will need...

So your goal shouldn't be slimming down windows to the bones, your goal should catch functinal windows without the things you don't need. It takes LOTS of tries untill you find your own configuration. We can share ours, but it is not meant for you, its for our usage style.

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View attachment 6172

What problems may one have if removing all non essential editions, would it decrease the ISO size noticeably and if one does it should it still keep integrating the WinPE update? Also, would the process take a lot of time?
 
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Every image inside install.wim is separate from each other. There is no problem removing one or more editions to save space.
Removing images doesn't take long, it's the recompression of the updated WIM which does. If you're editing in multiple steps, don't turn on ESD compression until the end. Otherwise it's wasteful.

WinPE, WinPE (Setup) are part of boot.wim, not install.wim.
 
stuff costs @AeonX double what i would pay for something. crucial ram(ballistix) is at very good prices for sometime, £38 for 8gb single ballastix. for 98% of what i do 8gb is enough but the 16gb upgrades i got recently are insurance incase what i do tomorrow changes.
Yes the price of any hardware is absurd. Video cards should be worth a Ferrari soon :p

8 GB of RAM is more than enough for most people who don't play games. For games 8 GB is at the limit of the minimum necessary and the ideal is to have 16 GB. But for some very specific tasks 8 GB is not enough like opening several virtual machines at the same time, etc. Browsers are consuming RAM like there's no tomorrow (Firefox mainly) so in a few years it may be that 8 GB will be too little to use the basics like surfing the internet.

there are various reasons to have a machine low to middle spec and with that you have to get as many resource savings as you can. its something i always had and when funds increased i didnt lose that habit.
One of the reasons is lower power consumption especially on laptops to increase battery life or for people who don't mind certain luxuries (4K resolution) or live in a country where high-end hardware is much more expensive than their income. I would like a slightly better graphics card but it was too expensive and maybe I didn't even need it. But for the moment it's great, when things get back to normal (if they do) I'll do an upgrade.

I look for efficiency in everything so my hardware is always focused on energy efficiency and I don't overclock (I don't think it's worth the energy and lifetime cost). My graphics card is mid-end and low power consumption enough for run the games I like at 1080p and 60 fps which is enough for me.

But even if I had more powerful hardware for me it's unacceptable waste of resources (I always aim for efficiency in everything) but Microsoft doesn't care about it anymore since the times of Windows 8.1 unfortunately.

Today's hardware far exceeds the minimum requirements to run the latest OS's and this makes developers lazy.

Fortunately we have tools like NTLite that help us optimize Windows :)
 
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I checked out another ISO hyped on YouTube, Ghost Spectre (3.11 GB).

This one wasn't made with NTLite, but we can reverse-engineer the removal list using NTLite (the wrong way). Mount the image. Uncheck all of the Compatibility boxes, and then uncheck all components. Save the preset.

What we created is a list of (almost) all components NTLite finds in the image. Now repeat this process using the RTM ISO. Compare both lists to find the "missing components".

TLDR - most of UWP apps, both Edges (Chromium & Legacy), edgeupdate, edgewebview

There might be perf tweaks hidden in the image. But again, not very original for component removals.

Compact & Lite presets look identical, except I know Lite was created later (from the version string). Didn't look inside the image to see what registry or service changes were made.

Basically anyone can pick a EDM soundtrack and hype their ISO.
 
I checked out another ISO hyped on YouTube, Ghost Spectre (3.11 GB).

This one wasn't made with NTLite, but we can reverse-engineer the removal list using NTLite (the wrong way). Mount the image. Uncheck all of the Compatibility boxes, and then uncheck all components. Save the preset.

What we created is a list of (almost) all components NTLite finds in the image. Now repeat this process using the RTM ISO. Compare both lists to find the "missing components".

TLDR - most of UWP apps, both Edges (Chromium & Legacy), edgeupdate, edgewebview

There might be perf tweaks hidden in the image. But again, not very original for component removals.

Compact & Lite presets look identical, except I know Lite was created later (from the version string). Didn't look inside the image to see what registry or service changes were made.

Basically anyone can pick a EDM soundtrack and hype their ISO.
yep i checked that one also years ago. he also hides a bat file in the system32 bla bla bla folder to make changes after system installation.... script commands are not professional and buggy.... amateurs...

new tweaks are more exciting than new removals. found a great one from abbodi86 this week :D
which one?
 
Video cards should be worth a Ferrari soon
low end silent graphics cards like my gt710s used to start at around £30 up to 40ish. if you use an igpu and you cant get a driver for it a gt710 is good enough. damned if im paying £70 upwards grrrrrr. not many low end cards about anymore and with supply shortages :mad:
 
Luls all these people and yet no one has the answers, alas I do and now you do, nostrovia


Introducing One of Txmmy's Presets (Gonna be a whole bunch of them, so that you can just target specific stuff within the iso)

This is basically removing the iso backup, thats included within windows itself, its like magic sit back and watch your iso shrink
 

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I checked out another ISO hyped on YouTube, Ghost Spectre (3.11 GB).

This one wasn't made with NTLite, but we can reverse-engineer the removal list using NTLite (the wrong way). Mount the image. Uncheck all of the Compatibility boxes, and then uncheck all components. Save the preset.

What we created is a list of (almost) all components NTLite finds in the image. Now repeat this process using the RTM ISO. Compare both lists to find the "missing components".

TLDR - most of UWP apps, both Edges (Chromium & Legacy), edgeupdate, edgewebview

There might be perf tweaks hidden in the image. But again, not very original for component removals.

Compact & Lite presets look identical, except I know Lite was created later (from the version string). Didn't look inside the image to see what registry or service changes were made.

Basically anyone can pick a EDM soundtrack and hype their ISO.
very good that one. But is there a video that explains it step by step? to be able to do it. I am interested in experimentation
 
The current process for extracting a preset from any ISO source:

1. Extract the source ISO to a local folder (using 7-Zip).
2. Load source image in NTLite.
3. Preset -> Save / Extract current image state
4. Unload the image.
5. Download a clean Windows ISO, matching the same release & edition as the source (ie. W11 22H2). It's very important to use the same release or your results will be wrong.
6. Extract the clean ISO to a local folder.
7. Load clean image in NTLite.
8. Load the saved preset extracted from Step 3.
9. Preset -> Save As to a final preset file.

The final preset will list the packages removed in comparison with the clean ISO, and may contain some of the source ISO's settings.
Be aware many custom ISO projects tweak multiple reg settings, and most of them can't be recovered by this technique.
 
The current process for extracting a preset from any ISO source:

1. Extract the source ISO to a local folder (using 7-Zip).
2. Load source image in NTLite.
3. Preset -> Save / Extract current image state
4. Unload the image.
5. Download a clean Windows ISO, matching the same release & edition as the source (ie. W11 22H2). It's very important to use the same release or your results will be wrong.
6. Extract the clean ISO to a local folder.
7. Load clean image in NTLite.
8. Load the saved preset extracted from Step 3.
9. Preset -> Save As to a final preset file.

The final preset will list the packages removed in comparison with the clean ISO, and may contain some of the source ISO's settings.
Be aware many custom ISO projects tweak multiple reg settings, and most of them can't be recovered by this technique.
thanks for the explanation. I'll start experimenting.
 
And I can tell you that, regardless of the sites within which there are myriads of "slim", "ultraslim", "veryslim", etc. versions. (and I have tested many... to learn...), in the end (i.e. post-installation) the problems then begin when you would like to install further software of personal preference which, perhaps, fail miserably.
The advice that many have given you (study these miraculous systems but then start testing yourself from a clean/untouched ISO) will lead you not only to "learn" the use of this beautiful software but also to obtain something specific to your needs.
 
XPerience did modded XP iso's but also had the sense to include nLite session files to mod your own legal source based on his presets and this was a much better idea. These "slim/lite" builds are rarely slim or lite and not worth the hype, usually are old out of date builds. Getting stuff to install, run, customise them further or update the bloody things leaves you right up crap creek without a paddle. Thats why i prefer to "trim the fat" and leave the meat and bones of the OS for a multi purpose pc giving wayyyy less headaches longterm.

Luckily nuhi has always been about customising and deployment aswell as shrinking it so even if you go very light on removals or dont remove at all there is still plenty that ntlite can do for you.
 
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