Shrinking System32 folder - OEMBIOS.BIN

**mpattonm** · 12-04-2004, 11:44 AM

I was trimming down the footprint of my setup during last few days to achive my goal of less then 250MB for WindowsXP (BTW my current footprint with WinXP SP2 is 278 MB). That is because I would like to use 256 CF IDE card to boot and run my OS from (with a little help of EWF taken out from XP Embedded). I was supprised when I realised biggest file in my System32 folder is OEMBIOS.BIN. It is 12.5 MB big. I know OEMBIOS.* files are part of corporate licence, and they are needed for proper licence validation, but 12.5 MB is not it quite a big file? Considering WinXP also reads this file anytime it starts to verify licence, causing unwanted delays, I would like to ask if anyone knows how to avoid this file.

**SFiorito** · 12-04-2004, 12:03 PM

I don't think that's going to be possible dude. The windows logon component uses that file. I've read that XPe developers were able to get rid of that file by using the minLogon component of XPe. MinLogon basically doesn't log any user into the system so it's really meant for devices that don't need any hard security or multi-user settings. It also improves boot times...

That's what I've got my sites on now that I figured out EWF...

**knubile** · 12-04-2004, 12:44 PM

my current footprint with WinXP SP2 is 278 MB

Can you share how you acheived this? nLite? I can't get mine less than 500.

**Nic** · 12-04-2004, 07:48 PM

min login sounds good guys

keep us posted...

**SFiorito** · 12-04-2004, 09:24 PM

Okay, I got minlogon working with XP. Booted up fine so I went ahead and removed oembios.bin, rebooted, and it booted up fine. Just so I'm not misunderstanding you: you already activated your XP, right? So this oembios.bin is being used every time XP boots up? Anyways, I still need to do some testing to see how well minlogon works. I'm only using it on VirtualPC so I don't see much of a difference in boot speed (VPC is slow as hell to begin with). I'll test it on my VIA system to see how well it works. Once I've got everything checked out I'll post instructions.

MinLogon isn't for everyone though. It basically "logs" you on as the System account which may cause some problems. I haven't seen any yet though. Hopefully this will speed things up even more!

**Nic** · 12-04-2004, 09:56 PM

sweet i cant wait to get EWF, minlogon and a lite version of xp in my car

**SFiorito** · 12-04-2004, 11:11 PM

Okay, here are the directions: http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/winnt-based/37724-using-minlogon-to-speed-up-booting-and-decrease-footprint-post327120.html

**mpattonm** · 12-05-2004, 04:08 AM

What do you know, he did it again

**IntellaWorks** · 12-07-2004, 09:56 AM

Got a question.

With this new stuff. I can trim down XP pro, impliment EWF + use minlogon. Enable a custom gui (instead of iExplore.exe)

I want to be able to add data to the harddisk (where the operating system lies) from what I'm reading from XPe EWF has a few differenet modes.

EWF DiskMode seems to be appropriate. But not sure how to impliment this, I'm going to be setting up a test envirnment in the next few days here to see what I can come up with.

EWF Write Modes

**SFiorito** · 12-07-2004, 10:16 AM

Well, when you say you want to add data what exactly do you mean? Just make a config change? Install software? Or start loading MP3's, DiVx, etc.? You could use "ewfmgr c: -commitanddisable -live" make your changes then "ewfmgr c: -enable" and reboot. But if that's on a CF card it's not a very good strategy I think. Once I get my CF system installed I don't plan on touching it unless it's something minor. If I need to install software or make major changes (like installing XP updates) I'll do that on my harddrive and redeploy the image to CF. If you just want to run EWF on a harddrive then you have a couple of options. The method above, or...

If you download the XPe trial and configure an image using the EWF Disk overlay mode you can look through the registry and find the settings. IF... it keeps all the settings in the registry. XPe has what's called the First Boot Agent (FBA) which will configure your runtime the first time it boots up. That's what usually configures EWF. EWF RAM Reg mode (what we're using) was added in SP2 for devices that can't be partitioned (like removable media) so it keeps all settings in the registry. There's the EWF API which you could take a look at because that's what FBA uses to configure EWF. One thing that I'll be looking at once I get my system set up on my CF card is using the EWF API to commit specific files rather than the whole overlay. I haven't looked into it enough to see if it still disables EWF or not.