Now that Virtual PC is finally free, I've become obsessed with producing the smallest possible Windows XP Virtual PC image. It's quite a challenge, because a default XP install can eat up well over a gigabyte. Once you factor in the swapfile and other overhead, you're generally talking about around 2-4 gigabytes for relatively simple configurations.
Why is paying for a good product an issue? Don’t you
like to get paid for the develpment work you do?
Like many out there I like open source and free whenever it makes since but clearly you liked the product and shouldn’t the developer or team that created be rewarded.
On my post you said this functionality wasn’t worth $40. You MUST have spent at least an hour messing with this and writing this post. How much are you paid an hour?
I’m amazed you’d waste this kind of time and not just use Virtual Optimizer.
The Virtual Optimizer only zeroes out the drive. it doesn’t…
Reduce the size of Windows XP
Defragment the drive
It does provide a 15% size reduction, which is nice, but it’s hardly the entire point of the article. It does work as advertised, but personally, I’d rather spend that $40 on XPlite.
no way I’m installing a defrager made by the “Whitney Family.” Who do you trust?
Yes, it might destroy my… virtual… machine… oh no.
This is del.icio.us material! What a cool concept that you can distribute a full VM on a single CD-R!
Since my laptop doesn’t have a DVD Burner, I struggled with this.
However, as soon as you install Visual Studio / Sharepoint / SQL Server, and such it will push it over the 800mb limit, but at least you can have a CD of something to start with.
You may want to look at the free nLite tool to create a stripped-down Windows XP CD. It appears to include some of the same functionality as XPlite, but applies it before the OS is installed.
Why free matters: I’m allowed to use free utilities at work, but anything I have to pay for requires a lot of red tape. It is actually easier to get a $600 tool than say a $40 tool.
Still not using that good old modem and are not planning to in the foreseeable future? Got a xDSL line, Wifi connection or LAN you always hook up to?
I thought so…
Then why not kill all the modem driver description files from “%systemroot%\inf”? They’re the “mdm*.inf” ones and they take up quite a few megabytes.
Btw.: Does anyone know a simple way to locate other deletable driver files… like say: old ISA-card drivers, drivers from obsolete graphic cards and TV-tuner devices?
