I have several installations that are offline installations only ,and are used to run "ahem" specific software only .I dont particularly want or need the collection of critical updates ,and was wondering ,has anyone ever made a list ,splitting up windows update into catagories ,for example "critical only" ...."performance tweaks"... "compatability "...."minor fixes" etc. obviousely I want to be as efficient as possible and get the most out of each installation ,but without adding all of the bloat . thanks .
Yes, you could try my update list, it splits the updates into categories such as Critical and Non-Critical, even has Optional. The links are below in my signature. btw, you will need to use Windows Update Downloader which is used with the list that you select.
thanks steven4554 but I want all the pre SP1 fixes tweaks and compatability updates .Installing SP1 would add all of the previous junk and critical updates and that is what I want to avoid . is there any way to get access to all windows updates ,so that I can choose what not to download .
Actually SP1 gets rid of nearly all the pre-sp1 updates and fixes, but if you rather stick with rtm version, i guess that's fine as well. As for accessing the rtm updates, it's going to be hard as i no longer provide a update list for rtm, and Solor only provides post-sp1 updates and fixes now, but have a look on the MS download center, you might find quite a few updates for rtm. Sorry i couldn't be of any help.
Why don't you start off an integrated sp1 dvd? It's just as clean rtmn I mean not bloated cause none of the redundancies you have when installing updates online are there. It's just has the files that changed between rtm and sp1 changed. So no download stuff or things required for uninstall are there. You could look at it as if it was a new windows build (which it actually is). You can than choose which post-sp1 updates you want. Btw: I think when you integrate updates with dism, the redundancies aren't there either, they appear of cource in the update list, but I think none of the files needed for uninstall are kept in this scenario. So this would also be about as clean as rtm. It's only when you install updates online (I mean by running the msu from a running copy of windows) you get some dirt.