Thread: Super small XP install

Originally Posted by Machinehead

I don't know if that will work. I'll do a VMware test this weekend if I remember.

Duh! What didn't i think of that LOL!

In any case, I tried it w/ VirtualBox and it booted right up w/o the status windows.

As soon as I resolve my HD Radio setup issue, I'll use minlogon on my carPC and test it all out.

Hope it goes well...

The first time I tried minlogon I killed my system because I didn't import the registry settings correctly. I was able to restore it but what a pain that turned out to be. That's when I decided I needed to test everything in Vmware rather than risk screwing up my CarPC.

That's good news though, I'm planning on installing microXP on my system, anything that can speed up cold boot times is a good thing for me.

MicroXP removes a lot of functionality, most of which probably isn't even needed in the average CarPC, but again, removes a lot of things.

Thank you for trying MicroXP v0.6b

Statistics:

Installation Time From End Of Formatting... 4 Mins 25 Secs

RAM Usage On First Installation............ 27.7 Mb*
Handles.................................... 1355
Threads.................................... 110
Processes.................................. 11

WINDOWS Folder............................. 182 Mb
Items In System32.......................... 670

ISO File Size.............................. 88.1 Mb


This is a greatly reduced installation of Windows XP Professional.

Please read these notes BEFORE using this edition of Windows:

Standalone system only! - No local networking is possible. The
"Network Connections" service has been kept in this edition of
Windows to stop errors when installing Ethernet card or modem
drivers. The "Network Connections" service is not there to
support LAN networking. You can of course just try to plug
another computer into your MicroXP computer, but networking
in this way is not guaranteed to work, because the related
services for this are removed (Computer Browser/Workstation)

Single user only! - You cannot add any additional users. Do not
try to add more users, otherwise your main account that is used
by default (Administrator) will become the new account and after
logging in, you will not have any desktop theme (not even Classic)
and the whole account will be ruined. You'll probably have to
install Windows again because if you make a new account it replaces
"Administrator" and tries to log you in with "Default User" - the
problem with this is - there is no "Default User".

No Webcams, Scanners or Digital Cameras! - You cannot use these
items in this version of Windows because the "Windows Image
Acquisition" service is removed.

FTP Sites - There is no "built in" support for downloading from
FTP sites - try using Filezilla or WS_FTP if you need to do that.
This functionality is gone because the "Application Layer Gateway"
service is gone, along with ALG.EXE that normally runs in Task
Manager, taking up about 6Mb RAM for what amounts to no reason.

No Visiting Windows Update! - You cannot visit Windows Update
with this version of Windows because Internet Explorer is removed.
You can manually download updates from Microsoft and you can also
use the alternative "Windiz" Update website through Opera or
Firefox. Because so much has been removed from this edition of
Windows, you are not likely to be any more "safe" installing
updates for Windows. NOTE: Because this edition of Windows uses
a patched "winlogon.exe" in order to remove the "oembios.bin"
file, you really should not update Windows anyway, in case
"winlogon.exe" gets replaced by an update. There are more
details about this in the eXPerience folder on the desktop
once MicroXP is installed.

No Fast User Switching! - Apart from you only being able to have
the one account anyway (Administrator) the ability to do Fast
User Switching is also removed.

No Password Storage - Windows will not save stored passwords,
however, this only really applied to Internet Explorer and
Outlook Express, which are removed. You will be OK using Firefox
or Opera web browsers and Thunderbird email client for emails.
Those are self contained programs and take care of storing your
passwords by themselves.

No CD-ROM Autoplay - When you insert a CD that would bring up a
screen to install the program contained on the CD, this does not
happen in this version of Windows, you will have to explore the CD
manually and run whatever file it is that runs the program's setup,
usually "setup.exe" on the root of the CD.

No Smart Card Detection!

No Scheduled Tasks! - You cannot set programs, like AntiVirus or
Hard Disk Defrag programs to run in the future. If you are going
to run those types of programs you will have to manually scan or
defrag whenever it is convenient. Despite this, one program that
will schedule its operations is Perfectdisk defrag, you do not
need Task Scheduler for this program to run a scheduled defrag.

No Remote Desktop! - There is no Remote Desktop in this version
of Windows - because the "Terminal Services" service is removed.

No Themes! - You cannot have the Luna (Blue/Olive/Silver) desktop
themes in this version of Windows, the only theme you can choose
is "Windows Classic" which it is already set to by default. You
can however install "Windowblinds" if you want to and it will
work fine - Windowblinds does not rely on the Themes service.

No "Uninterruptible Power Supply" service! - I always thought
"UPS Service" delivered parcels but apparently not - if you
have this type of device then it will not work on this version
of Windows. A UPS is only used for emergencies like if you have
a power cut - thats if you even have such a device.

the lack of networking alone eliminates a build such as MicroXP for myself. Personally I find TinyXP rev06 to be fairly fast and reliable. Installs and runs everything I've put on it as well. Boot times are decent too. In a VM on my machine I was able to get a cold boot time of 15 seconds from the start of loading windows to Roadrunner loaded and ready. One of these days I'll replicate the build onto the carpc.

Originally Posted by nst6563

the lack of networking alone eliminates a build such as MicroXP for myself. Personally I find TinyXP rev06 to be fairly fast and reliable. Installs and runs everything I've put on it as well. Boot times are decent too. In a VM on my machine I was able to get a cold boot time of 15 seconds from the start of loading windows to Roadrunner loaded and ready. One of these days I'll replicate the build onto the carpc.

Yeah, I have fast enough rig, by the time I'm even backed out of my long drive way, my system is up and running. Full install, tweaked services. Nothing removed.

hehe not me...my driveway is about 50-75 feet

When I do finally re-do my carpc windows installation, I'm going to jump in and do the EWF as well. Seems that just like a normal desktop pc, as time goes by it loads slower and I'm hoping that EWF may curb that behavior.

Also going to get a 266x compact flash and a CF>SATA adapter and make that my boot drive. Used a friends 266x cf card the other day and it was faster than the 2.5" drive I have in the carpc . So I'll use the CF with EWF for the OS and the 2.5" for the media.

Tis a good plan, first time my hard drive crashes due to being in my car, I'll redo the setup with a CF+shock force resistant laptop drive.

Thought I'd post an update...cause I couldn't wait to redo the setup in my car because it was so flaky. I wiped the drive and proceded in the following order:

Install TinyXP rev06 - No IE/messenger/msn or drivers
Installed drivers for my board, Bluetooth, WLan, and touchscreen
Installed:
Winamp 553
ffdshow (for all the codec support I'll need in the car)
iGuidance
RoadRunner
DFX 3.0 and Carwings skins
Then applied a series of registry tweaks, disabled the welcome screens, guiboot, and disabled many services.
Did final setups to RoadRunner config
Put RoadRunner in the Startup folder
Installed EWF + HORM support
rebooted, loaded iGuidance then hibernated.

My "boot" time is now about ~12 seconds from power-on to RoadRunner. About half of which is the stupid Bios...did everything I could to speed that crap up...but to no avail. I have the D201GLY2A board and it advertised a very fast POST sequence/bios screen...but my EVGA 680i bios is twice as fast...

so if anyone knows how to speed that up... I'd love to hear it.

While I had the system out of the car I also modded my BlueTooth GPS (GlobalTop G33) to have a set of jumper pins out the back, and made a small circuit that would turn it on when the system powered on. Was tired of having to always turn on the GPS puck manually. Also modded the motherboard to lower the cpu voltage so it wouldn't run so hot. Was able to drop the load temp down by about 7c doing this while maintaining stability (I felt this was important as the trunk of my Maxima gets very hot in the summers).

Other than that...TinyXP + EWF + HORM rocks. Very fast.

I'd kill for a 12 boot, I can't even get out of Bios in less than 10 seconds.

Could you share the registry tweaks you used?