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I used to use 98lite for this, which does still seem to be available. Worked very well back in the day.

I've used 98lite back then. The full version can also remove other unwanted stuff.

Yeah that was one of the reasons I picked up a copy, as it really gives a hell of a speed boost to lose all that IE based crap. You'll lose Quicklaunch and Active Desktop, but who the hell cares? It is worth it to get rid of all that IE ActiveX based crap they stuffed into the Win98 shell.

You really ought to give the website. I have mine set up for the Sleek Configuration so I can still use programs that require MSHTML.dll, but if your app doesn't need that you can go Win98 Micro and get a really scary fast desktop that is stable as a rock out of Win9x. The bootup and shutdown are also just insane after using it, literally a couple of seconds from BIOS to desktop. Solid as a rock too. It really is worth the $25 if you want to keep a Win9x machine around, it really is a great little tool to have, and any changes can be easily undone if you so desire. Give the demo a try, I bet you'll like it. They also have a version for Win2K/WinXP as well. Great little tools to have.

Yeah that was one of the reasons I picked up a copy, as it really gives a hell of a speed boost to lose all that IE based crap. You'll lose Quicklaunch and Active Desktop, but who the hell cares? It is worth it to get rid of all that IE ActiveX based crap they stuffed into the Win98 shell.

You really ought to give the website. I have mine set up for the Sleek Configuration so I can still use programs that require MSHTML.dll, but if your app doesn't need that you can go Win98 Micro and get a really scary fast desktop that is stable as a rock out of Win9x. The bootup and shutdown are also just insane after using it, literally a couple of seconds from BIOS to desktop. Solid as a rock too. It really is worth the $25 if you want to keep a Win9x machine around, it really is a great little tool to have, and any changes can be easily undone if you so desire. Give the demo a try, I bet you'll like it. They also have a version for Win2K/WinXP as well. Great little tools to have.

For long term Win9x usage I've found the best thing to do is get rid of the cruft, that is any crap you are not using. The money spent on a copy of Win98 Lite goes a long way when it comes to keeping Win9x alive for long periods IMHO. If you have an old copy of Win95 lying around you can even replace the slower Win98 shell with the non IE based Win95 shell and make it a screaming demon even on really old boxes.

I used Win98 Lite myself to strip down an old 733Mhz I keep for a Win98/DOS game box. It is easy to use and really gave that box a kick in the pants. They have a demo if there is anybody out there still needing Win9x for one reason or another. But if you want to keep a Win9x box going there is no better tool.

I don't think it's unreasonable to drop support for things from 13 years ago. "Seriously bitter" -- listen to yourself. You can remove IE from XP, try this: http://www.litepc.com/

You're welcome.

Oh a gamer after my own heart. I have to have my DOOM and Quake and SOF. BTW, if you like DOOM you will LOVE Hurt Me Plenty which is a Puppy stripped down for gaming With DOOMsday and Quake already loaded with a ton of extras and WADs loaded up. Just drop your full DOOM and Quake WADs and you are good to game! Has all the non gaming BS stripped out so it runs really well on older hardware too. Nice thing about it is they have done all the work and tweaked the gaming engine for maximum FPS under Puppy. Pretty much just boot and frag.

Did not know about the Goodwill. I guess I'll have to go scavenge around my local GW to see if they got some good gear I can snatch. I know last time I went there I managed to get a killer F15 fighterstick for $0.50 because it was serial. Picked up a cheapo adapter for $2 and got a year out of it before giving it away. Never thought to look there for boxes though. Thanks for the heads up.

I try to avoid Win95, it was just too buggy as far as USB goes. I still have my copy of 98lite I picked up back in the day, and with the universal Win98 USB driver installed I found that a stripped down Win98 can give me the speed of Win95(especially if I switch out the Win95 explorer for Win98s) but with the better USB support. I still have plenty of the old USB 1.1 cards lying around from salvages so adding USB to those that don't have it is trivial.

I have to agree with the AMD chipsets. The worst was the Via ones. Good luck trying to get any stability at all out of those POS chips. That is the only reason why I am trying to save the Athlon mobo, as it has the Nvidia Geforce 2 chipset. The only chipsets for AMD that I have found to have stability is Nvidia ones. But at Doug's shop we would keep a "bad bucket" for fried CPUs and there had to be over 100 AMD chips in there. There was a grand total of TWO Intel chips in the bucket: one got hit by lightning, and the other was a damned OEM with the el crappo PSU that took out the board and CPU when it blew. While I have known gamers that have sworn by AMD, I have also noticed that they ended up with more crashes and problems than I ever did. So I've always looked at AMD about like having a Cyrix(remember those?) in that it is the poor mans Intel. That is why I have never had a problem getting rid of anything Intel over 233MHz. My heat&air guy says he has no problems unloaded my dual boots and actually makes a little scratch selling them. As long as they don't end up in the dump I say good for him.

And I can see why you have some difficulty being so close to LA. I'm out a little town in AR that looks like something out of "Gone with the Wind"(in fact my apartment building is from 1925 and used to have Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis stay in it during the chitlin circuit days) so there aren't as many newer cast off boxes. Now that I know about Goodwill I may have to hit the one in LR to see if it is a score.

While I would agree to the grapefruit rule, I have found an exception to that rule: the Optiplex series workstation from Dell. The funky Grey Optiplex towers from 300-750MHz had pretty lightweight PSUs but actually put out pretty clean power. I am lucky that one of my neighbors is an engineer so I can bring gear over and test power output on his equipment. The Optiplex series PSUs actually put out pretty clean power to the rails. You just have to follow the 15w rule as Dell is notorious for going under weight on the PSU. And don't forget with that P4 to go overboard on the fans. A P4 will run like a scalded dog as long as she don't get too hot. For a P4 I like a 80 or 120mm in the front and a slower 80mm or 120mm in the back, to keep the pressur up, same as you.

I actually know a guy that does the 2 PSU trick too. Of course he puts cards in his rig that suck more cash that mo

Removing IE breaks a lot of functionality in XP,

You're joking, right? Try XPlite, for example:
http://www.litepc.com/
Works as advertised.

Any number of shells exist for replacing windows explorer, too. Most actually have *more* functionality.

Anyway, they don't need to remove it - just deliver XP - or, probably be more relevant to be talking about Vista - with alternative browers installed as well. Opera, Firefox, Chrome.

Because IIRC they were claiming that by integrating they were helping the customer who had a low memory machine by reducing the memory footprint of the browser. Remember that this was a time when RAM was still pretty expensive and many machines only had 64Mb of RAM from the factory. So their claim was that they were helping the customer,not trying to kill competition.

Of course many of us that wanted speed at that time simply used tools like this to strip IE out of the OS while leaving the HTML rendering component to keep from breaking apps that used the IE engine for help files. This actually would give a nice speed boost to Win98 as it didn't have IE running constantly in the background anymore.Of course if you want to look up the trial trascript go ahead,but I already have a skull thumping headache and can't take legalese ATM,sorry.

A Windows install without all the needless bells and whistles runs nicely. Who'd have thunk it. Well, many consumers thunk it, but Microsoft's marketing demagogues didn't.

Not to mention a few developers.

Note 1: Totally unrelated to OLPC. Just does what you asked.

Note 2: Free version does not currently support SP3.

Note 3: Not recommended if you are a casual user. You must know XP fairly well to use.

It's easy enough that there are 3rd party tools to do it. I can't see how microsoft would have a problem with it.

Maybe it's time for Damn Small Windows.

Long live XP

98Lite anyone? They've also continued develop for later releases e.g; 2000 and XP, but no Vista.
In other news, everythign old is new again.

Microsoft should look at nLite or XPlite. If They can shrink xp you would think Microsoft could do it too!
XPlite claims it can do a 350MB install.

And as a long-time Apple user, I would switch to cable modem before I'd install "malware" on my machine.

No need for the quotes. Heck I don't even install that IE malware on Windows. Thank the Lord for LitePC (and older versions of Windows, like 95/NT, where LitePC is not necessary.)

I'm calling bullshit.

On what? That IE7 was developed independently of Vista?

Of course it was developed independently. It was released long before Vista was.

Microsoft has been saying for 10 years that IE is INSEPARABLE from Windows.

They are correct in a sense.

While IE can be removed from Windows XP (I'm not sure about Vista) using XPlite, doing so breaks a lot of other things in Windows (help files etc). Trust me, I've tried it.

Any flaw in IE is a flaw in Windows.

I can see the argument for it, although I'll disagree. When I say "Vista" I mean the kernel + the subsystems (graphics, audio, network etc) + the security layer (UAC, digital signatures). The internet browser bundled with the OS -- especially when it is made available for another couple of OSes, and the development team is not part of the Vista development team -- doesn't count as part of the OS.

Plus, you have the choice of browser. You do not have the choice of subsystem or kernel.

The help files are non-essential stuff, so you can technically use Vista or XP without ever seeing IE. I cannot say the same for the other things.

I won't be bashing Microsoft regarding the production of this patch. I will, however, have a go at them for needing it (and many others) in the first place. If MS's products weren't shovelware inspired by flypaper we wouldn't have half these problems.

What I want is a first-party "XPLite"

And I run blackbox on my windows machine. Though, I can do have other options, too, such as Xoblite (a blackbox fork), LiteStep, or Aston, which I find consumes even less memory (abouy 3-4 mb worth), while giving me fancy plugins, transparency, and all that fun stuff. Hell, even GNUstep/Etoile does windows. And I'm pretty sure I've seen WindowMaker ports, as well.

Oh, yes, and you can also strip down windows by either hacking up the registry, or using fancy third-party Frontends. I recall sliming 9x to a 45mb install, and XP to about 1-200mb, by stripping out unecessary components and services (e.g. Outlook, Mediaplayer, explorer, etc). I haven't tried Vista as of yet, nor do I intend to in the near future, but I know that many of the alternate WMs havebeen ported.

Really, I'm trying hard, but I can't quite seem to get your point. Windows has had the option to swap outthe default explorer shell in favour of another, since NT4, and the process is painless. So, with that in mind, if your criticism is a fair one, would it not be just as fair to argue that Ubuntu is bloated because it installs Gnome by default?

Of course it isn't, you can't, however, have it both ways.

FWI: I'm not fanboying, but I do use a Windows desktop alongside my Unix boxen boxen, and I realise that each has their strengths and weaknesses, each their uses, and not one is unilaterally "better" than the other in all respects.

I wonder when the Vista version of LitePC http://www.litepc.com/ will be available. Once one can successfully remove DRM and other cruft from Vista at the click of a button, it should become more popular.

> Windows is an order of magnitude or two larger than this OS

More like a magnitude of 10... AOS4 iso = ~50 MB... XP Pro iso = ~500-600 MB, IIRC.

There's a lot of stuff in XP that most people will never use. You can reduce the footprint of XP to about 12 MB - this will load in seconds, but you won't be able to do anything!!

Of course, you don't have to go to this extreme - you can take out just the bits you know you wont need (like extra language / keyboard support and some of the more obscure drivers, etc) using nLite to strip it from your install cd, or XPLite to remove carp from an existing installation.

The URL needs to have the trailing slash removed

http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html

The latest developments in XPLite now see clean installations of Windows XP in under 350MB and Windows 2000 approaching less than 200 MB (excluding paging file) with much smaller memory requirements! These sizes are obtained simply by running XPLite/2000Lite on a fresh install of windows. Enterprising developers should easily be able to strip out additional log files, INF files and unused drivers to reduce the footprint by another 50MB or so. If your goal is to run a dedicated task in as little storage as possible - then look no further than XPlite.

"The latest developments in XPLite now see clean installations of Windows XP in under 350MB..."

http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html/

Win95 was a PITA, I fought with it for a weekend before I found out how to keep Plug&Pray from running amok. The solution was to let the hardware detection only handle essential stuff like keyboard, mouse and harddisk controller, then manually install drivers for the rest of the hardware.

Win98 was somewhat better (after I used 98lite, http://www.litepc.com/ on it), but still easily crashed by bad applications.

Windows 2000 was a massive improvement, finally a reliable system. I used it first in 2003, with a new PC that had no trouble with the increased hardware requirements.

I agree about Win XP and activation, it was the first Microsoft OS I did not even want to pirate (yes I could have a copy from a friend if I wanted). Vista seems even worse. Still running on Windows 2000 and occasionally trying a new Linux distribution.
Linux is getting better at a nice pace, and soon it might reach a point where I use it by default and run Windows only for games ;-)

> So the number of problems increases in line with the number of users ? Who'da thunk it ?

Actually, we (or now "they") typically didn't sell Windows systems to complete newbies, so we weren't significantly increasing the Micro$oft user base. The majority of our clientele were repeat customers, and usually when we sold Windows it was either an upgrade version being installed on the customer's current machine or a fresh OEM install on a new system meant to replace an older (retired) PC.

Basically, the initial user base for a new Windows version had to play catch-up with the previous, well-established user base for previous versions, and even early on we had the technical complaints and irate customers coming in about how the new Windows installations were fucking shit up more frequently and severely. *That* doesn't indicate to me a natural, unavoidable proportion of [no. of Windows problems] vs. [no. of Windows users] -- it points out a worsening of software design and quality control.

The tragically ridiculous part is that Windows has flaws in it that are not merely intolerable, they're easily avoidable -- if only M$ would have pulled their heads out of their asses:

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9903/09/removeie .idg/

http://www.litepc.com/ieradicator.html

Remember how Win98 kept screwing up and crashing on its users? Or how M$ kept insisting that Internet Explorer was integrated and unremovable from Win98 because it worked better that way?

Wrong and WRONG!

The presence of an integerated IE compromised the stability of the OS, and removing IE is both possible (hilariously so) and *preferrable* -- it improves Windows' reliability and (big fucking surprise!) eliminates problems with installing Netscape. Hell, if you were nervous about the idea of hacking IE out of Win98, you could make backups of explorer.exe, shell32.dll and comdlg32.dll before running a test trial -- if you didn't like the results, just restore the backups. For ultimate convenience, you could download the free IEradicator utility and perform a complete, automated and PERMANENT removal of IE -- in your face, Gates!

What it comes down to is that Windows is, as IBM engineers sarcastically coined the phrase decades ago, "broken as designed." The whole tentacles-throughout-the-system strategy violates one of the fundamental principles of structured programming -- modular design. You know, Divide And Conquer? Isolate software sections, isolate software bugs? As opposed to "spaghetti code"? The "crawling horror" effect? Hell, the whole Vista debacle is now a case study in "critical mass" -- M$ had (has) to keep delaying its release and cutting out initally planned features to keep the damned monstrosity from choking on its own complexity.

Just about everything in Windows can be removed - provided that you have the right tools - the footprint of XP can allegedly be brought down to 9MB... I have had it under 500.

I personally don't run Windows anymore, but when I did, I used nLite http://www.nliteos.com/ to remove the junk that I didn't need to create a unattended install cd. Optionally - if Windows is already installed, you can use tools such as XPLite http://www.litepc.com/ to remove the bloat.

..but I recalled this site existed

http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html

I imagine they have determined all of those services and figured out which are really necessary or not

http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html

You don't edit the source of websites to delete chunks you have no interest in.

http://rip.mozdev.org/

You don't delete chunks of the windows code that are irrelevant and unnecessary to you.

http://www.litepc.com/

You don't delete chunks of any program.

http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/freeware/xvi 32/xvi32.htm

I do it all the time.Use it for making a more secure machine for those that aren't computer savvy.Just install a better browser(I install Kmeleon,Firefox,Opera,And Seamonkey and let them choose what's best for them) and leave mshtml.dll for those programs that use it in their help files.

If you want to strip it from an exsisting pc,Here you go--http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html.It's not free,But $39.95 isn't a lot to pay when you consider all the MS crapware that it lets you toss.Not to mention the Malware can't exploit what isn't there.

Keep in mind that when WinXP came out I finally said enough is enough and quit using Windows completely. I've never touched any windows version later than Win2k...

OK... what's the correct procedure to clean up the registry when an errant program makes a mess of it?

Restore the backup registry. After making note of all the differences, so you can try to manually restore and fix the necessary entries for making the POS that caused the problem work, if that's actually required.

Honestly, in many cases it's less work just to wipe the machine and reinstall though. Registry is annoying.

Or... what options are there to make Windows more flexible in a heterogenous environment without using SFU?

Cygwin? Not sure what you're getting at here exactly. FTP, HTTP, telnet/SSH, SMTP, all can be made to work more or less correctly on Windows as I recall. I always tried to avoid using Windows-specific things on the network, and the places where I was ordered to do that weren't heterogenous...

Or... What is the single most important change you can make to your Windows installation to prevent or reduce the occurrence of spyware on your system (hint: it's not spyware removal tools)?

Lock down, remove, or (wherever possible) prevent the initial installation of IE and Outlook. LitePC has tools that I used to use to great effect here, some are free.

Of course to be truly secure, you need to yank all removable media, make sure the box is never plugged into a network and keep strict physical control. ;)

Unless someone has the right answers to those questions I don't think they can say they know much about computers.

I can't agree, since there are a few that have been fortunate enough to never have to work with windows and never needed to learn the ugly workarounds it requires. Doesn't mean they don't know computers...

So anyhow, you tell me. How'd I do?

And ever since Shane Brooks created LitePC, I can safely run Windows 98 and 2000 without a trace of IE, its dlls, or its rendering engine.

With the news of IE being separated (as it should), I might even consider looking at Vista, but I'll probably be 100% free of Windows by that point, as I gradually transition to Linux.

Who will protect us from M$'s products that will slow our computers and spy on us considering that's the plan?

We need another 98lite! ( http://www.litepc.com/ ) [note that in 95/98, it actually stripped M$'s crap out. In XP it does, but to a much lesser degree... mainly because it's less broken in a stock installation]

-M

You can't do this with Windows because you have no ability to strip the OS accordingly and only run what you need.

Third-party tools can help.

Um, you were right everywhere except when you said that IE was superior. It never has been, and never will be. Watch how much better a PC runs without IE by removing it with LitePC. Seeing is believing.

Unforunately the new Netscapes (since version 8) are garbage now that they "require" IE. It's a shame, really. The older versions of Netscape were good (except for 6.0, of course.)

Not entirely true ... you can use a utility such as XPlite and strip out a lot of crap. But it's just not the same as something like Linux, since no matter what you're left with the GUI.

The following registry tweaks should be used with caution:
IoPageLockLimit: increases the amount of pages that can be locked into memory. Changing this setting can improve performance although there is some controversy over this setting's effectiveness. Make sure that you have at least 256MB of RAM. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CONTROL\CURRENTCONTROLSE T\CONTROL\Session Manager\Memory Management\IoPageLockLimit. If it is no there you can create it. This is DWORD value. For systems with at least 256MB of RAM, 8000 hex (32768 decimal) or 10000 hex (64536 decimal). You can use 20000 hex (131072 decimal) on systems with 512MB+ of RAM. Warning: this setting may not be compatible with some drivers; especially video drivers. Enabling this option could cause critical processes and services to fail. You might not be able to log in.

LargeSystemCache: This setting is primarily used for servers but can help improve performance. Again, it's effectiveness may be controversial. It is located at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CONTROL\CURRENTCONTROLSE T\CONTROL\Session Manager\Memory Management\LargeSystemCache. If the key is not there, you can create it. This is a DWORD value. 0 for disabled. 1 for enabled.

DisablePageExecutive: Again this is a controversial setting. You may or may not notice a difference in performance and it is driver sensitive so be forewarned about using it. It too has the potential to cause crashes after being enabled. This setting prevents kernel memory from being paged. It is located at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CONTROL\CURRENTCONTROLSE T\CONTROL\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive. This is a DWORD value. 0 for disabled. 1 for enabled.
Note: Any problems encountered from changing these settings will be noticed on next boot. They are a "either it's fine or it isn't" settings.

To reduce boot time, you can disable autodetection of devices on IDE controllers that have no devices connected to them. This can be done from the device manager. Also, adjust Windows for best performance and turn off the themes service.

Lastly, there's XPlite which can help cut down on some of the fat. Also, be sure to check out TweakXP.com for more XP performance tweaks. And there's nLite. Unlike XPlite, nLite allows you to remove Windows components before installation. It also has service pack integration.

You don't need security patches if you simply uninstall the problematic applications and replace them with better alternatives and installing some top-of-the-line antivirus software. And yes, everyone should use some sort of antivirus, as it's only common courtesy, considering the fact that Linux users are bound to have some friends that use Windows and sometimes communicate via e-mail.
Seriously, even something as simple as a .jpg or .png file can cause serious issues in Windows, so why not have the decency to catch such files and stop them from being spread all over?

Remove IE (or whatever else) from Windows 98,Me,2000,XP:
LitePC

Get all your patches for Windows 2000,XP,2003 (Microsoft and otherwise) on one handy autopatching CD:
AutoPatcher

I am not affiliated with either product, however, I use both and would say they both work well. A machine running Windows98 with the MSHTML Engine removed is a thing of beauty. I used LitePC (then 98Lite) to run Windows98 with the Windows95 Explorer for several years until LitePC for XP came out. A note about the AutoPatcher. It have EVERY IMAGINABLE patch. Don't just check them all, just check the ones you actually want/need, otherwise you could create a mess.

LitePC

Am I the winner?!

MSIE was never the best browser.

Truer words have never been spoken on /. Why on earth would anyone CHOOSE to use a "browser" that is really an OS component and the main shell?! That's just asking for problems right there. No thanks, I'll never let that POS infect my OS. Thank heavens for LitePC

No problem.

I've just heard of IE Eradicator...I guess this can do the job. Have a look: http://www.litepc.com/ieradicator.html

This article only echoes what I have known for nearly a decade:

Do not EVER, EVER use Internet Explorer! EVER! Not at work, not at home, not in your local library. These people are only just now realizing this?! Forensic experts must really hate me when I use browsers that cache everything into RAM, such as Lynx, Links, OffByOne, et. al.

I don't do this to clear my tracks; I do it because there's less thrashing and fragmentation on the hard disk. Oh yeah, and because IE is the most insecure piece of garbage ever devised. Free yourself of IE (and other useless Windows components) forever with http://litepc.com/.

P.S. For anyone taking this comment too seriously, yes, I already know how to get rid of IE and have been happy without it for many years.

For these reasons, and many others, I have vowed to never install a 32-bit version of IE greater than 3.x. Thankfully nowadays, there's LitePC.com, which can safely uninstall IE and other useless "Windows components." Too bad it didn't exist in 1997 when I really needed it, though....