BIG BOOK OF

Windows
Hacks Preston Gralla

Tips & Tools for

unlocking the
power of your
Windows PC
Big Book of

Windows
Hacks
First Edition

Preston Gralla

BEIJING • CAMBRIDGE • FARNHAM • KÖLN • PARIS • SEBASTOPOL • TAIPEI • TOKYO

BIG Book of windows hacks
by Preston Gralla

Copyright © 2007 Preston Gralla. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.

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ISBN-10: 0-596-52835-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-596-52835-5
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 11 System Performance
Ever since the first version of Windows was introduced, people
have complained about system performance. When it comes to
PCs, people have three speeds in mind—fast, faster, and fast-
est, and they only want to go the fastest.
In this chapter, you’ll find all kinds of hacks for improving system performance. You’ll find out the
truth—not the hype—about using USB- and flash memory-based ReadyBoost in Windows Vista,
and discover a secret for using it even with USB drives Vista says can’t be used. You’ll find out how
to strip the crud out of your system install, how to make the most of your RAM, how to install a fast
RAID hard drive, and plenty more.

HACK 156: Strip the Crud Out of Your Windows Install

Put your Windows installation on a diet and save your precious
disk space for more important things than Windows features you
will never use.

Windows has a huge footprint. Vista wants at least 8 GB for an installation, and after you’ve installed
it, you’ll find that it takes up almost 7 GB of space just for the operating system, as shown in Figure
11-1.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could remove some components? Unfortunately, the “Turn Windows
Features On or Off” control panel doesn’t actually remove anything from your computer; it just
toggles components on and off. Fortunately, there is a way to slim down your Vista installation: Dino
Nuhagic’s vLite lets you remove components, add drivers, and enable certain tweaks. Once you’re
done, you can create a new installation DVD and install the slimmed-down version of Vista.

To get started, first download vLite from www.vlite.net and install it. You’ll need to install it on a
computer that’s running Windows and has plenty of free disk space to use as a scratch area for
temporary working files. I’d suggest at least 5 GB of free space, but more is always better.

When you run vLite, it notifies you of any needed dependencies and offers to install them. Next, it
displays the main vLite screen as shown in Figure 11-2.

Click the Browse button, and choose the location of your Vista install files. This will probably be your
Vista installation DVD, so make sure that’s in the drive, and choose it. Next, vLite asks you to choose
a location to store the installation files. This is where the modified installation files will reside. Once
you’ve done that, vLite copies over the entire DVD, which can take a while.

After vLite has copied everything over, it asks you to choose which Vista version (Business, Home
Basic/Premium, Ultimate, etc.) to customize. Choose the one you plan to install. Now you’re ready

524 BIG BOOK OF WINDOWS HACKS

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# 156

Figure 11-1.
Free space after a Vista install

QUIcK HacK
“DE-CRAPIFY” YOUR PC
Figure 11-2.
The vLite start screen
Just about any PC
you buy is filled with
“craplets”—trial
programs that clutter
your PC, pop up and
ask that you register,
and generally sludge
up your PC. The
solution? Get the
free PC Decrapifier
(www.pcdecrapifier.
com), which searches
through your PC and
removes as many of
the craplets as it can.
Among the nearly four
dozen craplets it kills
are multiple kinds of
Norton, McAfee and
Trend Micro trial anti-
virus products, Wild
Tangent games, and
MusicMatch, among
others.

CHAPTER 11 - STRIP THE CRUD OUT OF YOUR WINDOWS INSTALL 525

 to step through the configuration. Click each of the tabs on the left of the vLite screen to configure
your installation media:

Components
Use this tab to choose which components to remove. This can free a lot of disk space, but don’t get
too greedy, or you might remove something you really need.

Tweaks
You can do some fun stuff here, including forcing Vista to try and enable glass mode even if there’s
not enough RAM, use a different font for the user interface, disable UAC [Hack #108], get rid of the
hibernation file, and more.

Drivers
If you have any drivers you want to add to the installation, here’s where to do it.

Once you’ve made your choices, click Apply; you’ll be able to choose whether to “Just apply the
changes” (modifies the installation choices without shrinking the size of the installation media;
you’ll still end up with a smaller installation even if you choose this) or “Apply and rebuild” (removes
all but the version of Vista that you selected earlier). You’ll also have the opportunity to specify
which versions of Vista to remove from the media. After you’ve made these choices, vLite starts
building the final installation set.

Now you can click the ISO tab, as shown in Figure 11-3. From here you can do a few different things.
If you just want to create an ISO image of the modified installation files, select Create Image from
the drop-down menu. You can then use this with a free virtualization environment (See Chapter 2)
such as VMware Server or Virtual PC to test the image out (if not, you can choose Direct Burn from
the drop down to burn the image to the DVD drive on your computer, and then you can use the disc
to install Vista on a real computer.)

Figure 11-3.
Creating the new Vista image

526 BIG BOOK OF WINDOWS HACKS

 HacK
# 157
Figure 11-4.
Vista’s smaller footprint after customizing with vLite

QUIcK HacK
GET MORE
PERFORMANCE
GADGETS
Figure 11-4 shows the free space available on the computer after removing a bunch of stuff. This
also includes the 512 MB of disk space saved by disabling the hibernation file, but it’s still a big The Hobby Lounge
difference! (www.betanetwork.
net/hobbylounge)
Windows XP users can also get in on the fun with nLite, which is available at www.nliteos.com and is makes plenty of other
also one of Dino Nuhagic’s creations. performance-related
gadgets, in addition to
— Brian Jepson the Multi Meter. It also
makes a gadget that
tracks quad core PC
performance (the Multi
Meter Q gadget), one
that reports on hard
disk use on multiple
hard disks attached
to your PC (Multi HDD
Meter), and even a
gadget that shows you
your fan speed, internal
PC temperature,
voltage use and more
(Speedfan Meter).
Get them by going to
www.betanetwork.
net/hobbylounge
and clicking Sidebar
Gadgets. You’ll have
to register at the site
to download them.
Most, if not all, are also
available when you go
to the Microsoft gadget
site [Hack #157].

CHAPTER 11 - HACK MULTICORE PERFORMANCE 527