Best/Recommended nLite Configurations

[Guest]

[Soyabeaner]

For experts or long time users of nLite, what are your thoughts on the best or recommended configuration of this imtimidating-looking program?   By best I really mean to exclude the useless programs that most users will never use (e.g. Movie Maker, Outlook Express, etc.) while maintaining a functional OS without any errors like in Event Viewer or future Windows Updates patches?

I have never used it before because just based on the screenshots of the numerous Windows items, it scares me if I selected the wrong ones to not include on a customized Windows XP installation setup.

[MorphOS REBOL]

Well, this is a really difficult question.

Everyone knows about Windows. It started as a cheap copy of the Amiga Operating System and was called Windows 3.1. Then it was called 95, 98, 98 ME, NT, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Media Center Edition, now Vista, tomorrow Astalavista (oh, pardon me, we're not there yet). Before that time, there was MS DOS (nowadays DOS is rather related to some sort of attack, but don't think about it)

Windows is known to be primarily attacked by so called "hackers". This is the landlord's definition.

The program "NLITE OS" definitely is a Windows "hack".
Maybe it will soon be forbidden in Germany to use this tool.
Because of the new anti-hacking laws.

You may know people like Matousec. Or maybe you are one of the people that gave hints to Secunia at certain vulnerabilities concerning software you like.

In Germany, it's now forbidden to do research on software vulnerabilities, if you're not involved in the software company that sells the relating product.

Now, I hope, you get a clue of what "hacking" is all about.

In the new German law, there is no difference being made between "hackers" and "crackers", and certainly not between "friendly" and "evil" so-called hackers.

Ok, now let's go back on topic:

NLITE (also known as NLITEOS) is a handy little prog that enables the USER to choose which components of Windows he wishes to install and which not.

As Soya has already said, there are certain system parts or processes no one ever really needs or uses, and to remove them, means adding some crucial security to your PC. (i.e. Personal Computer, Soya lol)


I will not give a thorough explanation here, every user will have to decide on his own if he wants MS Media Player, Windows Messenger, Microsoft Messenger, MSN, Outlook Express, and other evil software pearls to be installed by default.

NLITE gives you the choice to not only remove things, but to not install them in the first place.

If you use all available removal options, though, your OS might not work at all.

So I really recommend to try and experiment a bit with it.

There is no default "best removal settings" offered by it.

But of course, you can disable all dangerous "fullgrown applications" with it, and I really urge you to do so.

You could also remove the IE, but, since it is part of the OS, I would not recommend it.

NLITE's GUI will give you some spartanic hints on what is save or not save to remove.
Be careful, though. Removing all of those hundreds will leave you in Armageddon at the end.

Now, do I recommend NLITE? Definitely. It's the best thing around.

Who needs Windows welcome show and help introductions? They just linger on a 300 mb space part of your hd, you will not want or need it.

I managed to decrease the size of a new OS installment from about 690 mb to about 170 mb, and the machine worked faultlessly, without any complaints. It's not but the smaller size that matters.
Use the prog carefully, read the lines, and you will be more secure.

You don't really need the included Media Player. But keep the 6.4 player functions.

Then install window media lite, real alternative lite, quicktime alternative lite
(just visit fileforum.betanews to get them) and try to get JetAudio from Cowon. It will give you all you ever need.

[MorphOS REBOL]

Ok, I will try to give a few more hints for people who never dared to try NLITE...
(There's absolutely no guarantee that the following will work on EVERY machine on this

planet, so don't blame me if it doesn't work for you, ok?)


Rather secure and/or recommended to remove are the following:


Applications:


Briefcase
Charmap
ClipBook Viewer
Defragmenter (get hdiskdefrag and auslogics disk defrag instead!)
Internet Games (suxxx enourmously)
NT Backup (get a better tool!)
Paint (are U kidding me? now go and get Artweaver for free!)
Pinball (kill it)
Screensavers (there are better ones around)
Wordpad (now what a crap)


Drivers

Depends on what you use or will need in the future, if insecure, leave them all in...


Hardware Support

If not knowing what's going on inside, leave them as they are...


Languages

Don't remove your own tongue here!


Services:

Alerter (keep your nerves healthy!)
Application Layer Gateway (I hate tunnels since I was a child)
Beep Driver (beep! beep!)
Distributed Link Tracking Client (get ccleaner basic w/o yahoo toolbar to clean your

shortcuts)
Error Reporting (again, the nerves....)
Fax Services (if you need them, leave them in, elsewise get rid of them)
Imapi (Primitive CD Burning Tool, get InfraRecorder instead!)
Indexing Service (who wants to be indexed?)
IPSEC Policy Agent (useless)
Message Queuing (MSMQ)
Messenger (hello!)
Performance Logs and Alerts (the performer knows it all...)
QoS RSVP (away with it!)
Quality of Service (QoS)       (QOS eats your connection bandwith!)
Remote Registry (now we don't want that, do we?)
Secondary Logon (only one user per session, please!)
Service Advertising Protocol
Telnet Server (away with it!)
Uninterruptible Power Supply (eating Kellog's CornFlakes will be more useful)
Universal Plug and Play (grrrrrrrrrr)
Volume Shadow Copy (since I was a child, I was in fear of shadows behind me...)
WebClient (you are the spider, I am the fly?)
Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) (get CFP PRO!)

Operating System Options

Administrator VB scripts (make your own scripts if needed!)
Desktop Cleanup Wizard (rather do that yourself, you lazy son of Bill ...)
Disk and Profile Quota (useless crap)
Document Templates (ever used them? now, come on...)
DR Watson (crap, and, again, my poor nerves....)
File and Settings Wizard (I am the wizard! There will always only be ONE true wizard!)
Framework (Remove if you don't need it! Some third party software needs it, but you can

always reinstall it)
Input Method Editor (I use my keyboard with my toes!)
MS Agent (shoot the dog!)
Out of Box Experience (OOBE)
Search Assistant (lonesome wanderers like me won't ever like this silly compagnion)
Security Center (If it gets on your nerves...)
Tour (tons of crap!)
Web View (content not suitable for people suffering from arachnophobia!)
Zip Folders (get 7 zip 4.55 instead!)



Network

Client for Netware Networks (wtf?)
Communication tools (how interesting)
FrontPage Extensions (if you use Frontpage, keep it, but why not dare to use Kompozer?)
Internet Connection Wizard (meet the feebles!)
Internet Information Services (IIS) (do you have information for Bill?)
IP Conferencing (ever wanted to be on a conference with Bill?)
MAC Bridge (only needed if you shed some water on your MAC's tastature)
MSN Explorer (there are better ways to explore the world!)
Netmeeting (nice to meet you elsewhere)
Network Monitor Driver and Tools (Big Bill is watching you!)
NWLink IPX/SPX/NetBIOS Protocol (how interesting)
Outlook Express (I would never use this train to hell)
Peer-to-Peer (oh, of course, Bill encourages you to share your files, your OS, your GF...)
Synchronization Manager (stay different!)
TAPI Application Support (really not needed)
Vector Graphics Rendering (VML) (same as above)
Web Folders (arachnophobia again)
Windows Messenger (Hermes without sword and shield)



Multimedia

AOL ART Image Format Support (ever experienced AOL as an artist?)
Images and Backgrounds (how boring...)
Luna Theme (not sunny enough, for my taste)
Media Center (do you have one?)
Movie Maker (not too bad, but I never use it, there's better freeware around)
Music Samples (definitely not my taste)
Old CDPlayer and Sound Recorder (now, is this a relic from Windows 3.1?)
Speech Support (You really need this?)
Tablet PC (do you have one?)
Windows Media Player (get windows media lite instead, and then some...)
Windows Sounds (Now, the only real psycho shocker if on headphones...)

ATTENTION:
Do NOT and NEVER remove:

Background Intelligent Transfer (BITS) (rather use services.msc and choose "manual")
Automatic Updates (choose "disabled")
Internet Explorer (just use the "uninstall from desktop" function on your MS software tab)

Or you will never be able to do an online Update again...

There are many more options, if you are insecure about them, leave them as they are.

The most dangerous/annoying/crappy ones we have already removed with the above list.
(With the exception of IE of course, but simply disallow this one by your HIPS, and use a

better browser: Opera or Firefox (the latter one only with security extensions applied, such

as NoScript, AdBlock Plus, Prefbar.)

Hope this helped and was not too boring for you to read through.

Cheers
The REBOL

Now having a fine beer, after writing so much.

[Soyabeaner]

Clever & funny descriptions

[MorphOS REBOL]

That's only because we got the best beer in the world here. Even if life gets harder every day here, the QOB has not changed since centuries.

[MorphOS REBOL]

Oh, seems like I forgot to mention it:

QOB is the acronym for "Quality of Beer", now a registered term for ol' REBOL me.

[giraffe]

Brilliant - thank you. Most of the services that you mention, I have already disabled but, like you Soya, nLite frightened me.
After this I might have a go with an old HD that has XP on it. If I bork it, I'll install Kubuntu instead 

[Soyabeaner]

There's one item on that list that I'm keen on: Defragmenter.  I know it sucks, but it's tied to the Prefetcher that I use.  It might not work if the Windows defragmenter is out of the picture.

[MorphOS REBOL]

And here's some maybe useful links for anyone who dares to castrate his Windows installation CD by using NLITE:

hdiskdefrag: (beware, German language only, but let's you choose how to sort the defragmented files, great tool:

http://www.withopf.com/tools/hdiskdefrag/

The simple but lovely Auslogics DiskDefrag:

http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/download/diskdefrag_install.exe

The German version of Auslogics DiskDefrag (unfortunately the build is older, but works flawlessly):

http://www.disk-defrag.de/download/diskdefrag.exe

InfraRecorder (Do you really need the Nero overbloat? Sad to say, because Nero is a German prog, but so is InfraRecorder by Christian Kindahl, and it's free...)

http://infrarecorder.sourceforge.net/?page_id=5

CCleaner without Toolbar here:

http://www.ccleaner.com/download/builds/downloading-basic

(at the moment) most actual 7 zip build here:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sevenzip/7z455.exe

Windows Media Lite:

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Windows_Media_Lite/1153684346/1

Quicktime Alternative:

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/QuickTime_Alternative_QT7_Lite/1049831315/3

Real Alternative lite:

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Real_Alternative_Lite/1054136293/2

And, last but not least, for all Mozilla Firefox users:

Prefbar:

http://prefbar.mozdev.org/installation.html

Always the latest NoScript Versions:

http://noscript.net/getit

Artweaver:

German version:

http://www.artweaver.de/index.php?de_version

English version:

http://www.artweaver.de/index.php?en_version


Cheers

[MorphOS REBOL]

well, the prefetcher at least worked on my sys, even if having removed the defragmenter.

Interestingly, some commercially available defragmenters I tested some years ago, were depending on the WINDOWS defragmenter. That makes me think of bad words like "fraud", am I right? Probably they only sold a beautiful GUI for an already built in, rather crappy defragmenting tool?

Auslogics DiskDefrag and the above mentioned HardDiskDefrag have their own defragmenting routines and don't depend on the built-in Windows crap, just to let you know

[MorphOS REBOL]

Soya my friend?

any suggestions?

[LeoniAquila]

I'm very glad to see this thread, which I've completely missed until right now.

nLite has seemed to be really interesting for me. Unfortunately I've only had Windows on recovery CD:s, no XP CD in other words. Now, since only a few weeks, I've been spoiled with an XP Pro SP2 CD from my university which I use now.

When time comes it'll be cool to give this a shot. Never again I'll see Movie Maker and Outlook Express in my Program Files folder...

LA

[Soyabeaner]

Soya my friend?

any suggestions?

How about taking out PC Health?  The only side effect I've noticed so far is I can't type msconfig or msconfig.exe on the run menu; the full path must be typed out for it to load MS Configuration.

[MorphOS REBOL]

Anyone of you who already gave nliteOS a try.....Soya? Leoni? maybe....


would be really nice if you'd comment on your Xperiences so far... Because, if it will be revealed someday that I was, for some years, the only User doing that nlite crap, no one will ever think this would be a reliable thingie... (lol)

So...did (and if yes, how did) it work on your comps?

Why not share with all of them / us your personal experience?

Come on now!

[Soyabeaner]

I would, but I don't have a spare computer to test it out.

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