Are you surrrrre? If it’s a hardware problem then you are nearing the point of throwing the drive out the window.
LOL, that’s true. But here’s the thing:
Created an nLite CD on April the 25th (“nLite25”) and have used it since then, until yesterday (May the 20th). During the final hours of this CD’s life, the hardware stopped working. Seems to have happened after installing .NET Framework. 
And why did I install .NET? Because I made a new nLite CD yesterday (“nLite20-a”). Now, to be able to burn this CD, I had to reinstall nLite25. So I did that. Then, when booting to nLite20-a, this CD didn’t work at all (because I removed the wrong CPU driver, LOL!). So still on nLit25, I had to install .NET again and make a new nLite CD - “nLite20b”. But guess what? My completely new (non-trashed, except for .NET) nLite25 now refuses to burn nLite20-b! So ONCE AGAIN I installed nLite25, without .NET, only to burn nLite20-b. Luckily it worked. And then I finally installed nLite20-b, which I’ll use now. Summary; number of reformats yesterday evening: 3.
What really strikes me is that a fully functional OS (nLite25) refuses to burn a CD after I installed .NET and nLite itself. Wish I knew more of what “killed” my CD/DVD functionality. It certainly wasn’t any cleanup in the system32 folder…
LA
Let me guess: you used previously installed .NET v2 and now since you love keeping everything updated to the latest version (except Vista), .NET v3 ruined it?
This part is confusing. How did nLite work without .NET?
Wrong, for some reason .NET 3 is some kind of exception. Maybe because I don’t want more of .NET than necessary (which, I suppose, should mean that I should use v 1.1 instead). So I stayed on .NET 2.0 SP1.
“nLite25” refers to the CD I made with nLite on the 25th of April, just as nLite20-a is the first CD I made on May the 20th and nLite20-b is the second CD I made on May the 20th.
Anyway, now I’ve also “killed” the Automatic Updates. Followed the advice of Ragwing:
Open cmd and write: sc delete BITS sc delete wuauservDelete the following files from %windir%\system32:
bitsprx2.dll
bitsprx3.dll
bitsprx4.dll
wuapi.dll
wuauclt1.exe
wuauclt.exe
wuaucpl.cpl
wuaueng1.dll
wuaueng.dll
wuauserv.dll
wucltui.dll
wups.dll
wuweb.dllwucltui.dll.mui
wuaueng.dll.mui
wuaucpl.cpl.mui
wuaucpl.cpl.manifest
wuapi.dll.mui
wupdmgr.exe
And what did I gain?
Before: system32 - 256 MB, 1308 files
After: system32 - 254 MB, 1293 files
Not much, in other words.
LA
How 'bout this?
Start > Run > %windir%\System32\rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultUninstall 132 %windir%\inf\qmgr.inf
It’s only one service. What’d you expect 
But at least it’ll ease your mind knowing less junk for future updates.
Don’t forget you’ll have to RegSeek the leftovers.
What will happen?
Well. I can do all I need to do, including updating windows, using office, browsing internet, gaming, listening to music/watching movies, my themes still active, with some tweaking, i can run my antimalware apps. tbh, I can’t even tell the difference, other than my comps leaner, faster, and cleaner. (I love that clean feeling 
)
In terms of how much faster it is, I guess it depends on the computer. His guide does improve boot time and makes IE go faster (my IE was sluggish before).
The thing is, I’m not sure if it’s quite worth it. Took me a good 2 months to get it to work exactly like I wanted it to. I reinstalled windows 15+ times. But now, it’s all good. Made my own batch file to delete everything. Cuts out a ton even on an n-lited windows.
You’re lucky. I did it about 25 times :o >:(
I removed almost everything. But i wasn’t mad with service removal. So my OS looks pretty,clean as possible and can perform any task a full ■■■■ OS can do, except printing. ;D But I have a printer connected to my laptop, so I don’t need this feature 
…and I’ve activated Windows so many times now, that M$ refuses to accept my serial number. >:(
Gotta contact their support. If they still refuse to activate my XP Pro, I have two options (“plague or cholera”, that’s how we say in Sweden): 1. going back to my Acer recovery CD XP Home OEM version, which is über-bloated and requires much work to get tweaked, or 2. trying my copy of Vista Pro (got it from M$ via my university), which I doubt will work nice on my old machine… :-TD
Maybe the best solution would be to use the Acer recovery CD, make my own XP Home CD from the i386 folder and then use nLite to make it slim. The only problem I can really see here is that I don’t know which serial number to use - the one extracted from the system will not be the same as the one on the sticker beneath the computer. But that’s a future problem, we’ll see what happens.
LA 
Leo >:( You didn’t pay attention to that PM a while ago >:( It’s the official command line to uninstall BITS.
And hence, where an imaging program would’ve save y’all time 88)
I did read the PM before I asked, but you didn’t mention BITS. :-\
Hm, so reinstalling an image won’t require activation? Anyway, I’m really ■■■■■■ off, why would M$ keep me from activating my XP Pro once more. I can’t be the only one in the world who have reinstalled Windows with the same key ~20 times. ■■■■ it.
BTW, the reason why I had to reinstall once more, was that I went completely mad yesterday on the DLL and EXE files. Imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger, shooting DLLs and EXEs… I did that, carefully from the advice of Bold Fortune, but still Windows gave up and didn’t boot anymore. >:( I don’t blame the guide, but I really didn’t delete anything that was obviously not recommended to delete. Only tons of DLLs and EXEs related to disabled services.
LA
The title of that PM was clear 88)
It still would, but at least I’ll save you from having to entering it in (and to prevent problems between chair and keyboard).
A pity that I always forget to look on the titles. :-[
Hm, but I remember when I used my recovery CDs to restore XP Home OEM. There were never any activation. Anyway, maybe we should have a new thread for activation/licensing issues.
!ot!
LA
I found out that disabling WMI service and deleting the folder “wbem” from system32 seems to work, saved me about 25 MB (don’t remember exactly).
Current status:
Windows folder (complete): 374 MB
system32 folder (complete): 290 MB
system32 folder (files only): 246 MB
Come on now, kill your systems.
LA
If I killed WMI, not only will my EventViewer log be unclean (that’s a dirty word for you, LA), but I won’t have a computer running to tweak any more of it.
You could benefit from making tweaks that generates errors in the Event Viewer.
LA
What kind of benefits? :THNK
Hi folks,
Striping it down bit by bit,as you said LA sp3 has put a lot of stuff back on so what ive been doing,and i hope someone can confirm im doing the right thing is checking the sp3 folder for things first,if they are there delete them then move on to the system32 folder.
Couple of times ive had the message folder is in use cannot delete,not sure why,couple of things im not to sure about deleting so i may be after some advise.
Be back soon ;D
Matty
I’ll be a bad now. Sorry 
Just download XP SP3 RTM from torrent site. Strip it with nLite. Enter your legit XP serial and your done. Simple.
Why download it from a torrent? Something that has the potential to affect your OS should downloaded from M$.
Matty, that’s the wrong (old) way of deleting SP3 components. You have to use nLite to ensure a thorough cleaning to begin with. Manual removal, no matter how much of an expert you are, cannot compare.