Hello dear MDL members, I'm planning to customize and capture a windows image (wim file) of WIN7 rtm enterprise N edition. Also I was able to download a WIN7 rtm enterprise E edition (both are x64). I hope to capture the N edition image after stripping out IE8 (by editing the registry and deleting the necessary folders) or try to delete wmp and other media stuff the same way on the N version. For the comparison of the two images I was thinking to set up 2 virtual machines. So my question is: by only deleting the necessary folders and editing the registry of the mounted wim could this experiment work or it should be much more tedious? Reason for the above is just natural curiosity and that I hate the fact that IE folder and who knows what does still exist after I give it an uncheck in Windows Components. I would have also given a try to strip out the gadget service as running gadgets can allow remote code execution but there were no editions leaked excluding this service.
If you mean mounting and removing things you can do that with install_wim_tweak or things like rt7lite It should be noted that having a butchered version of windows will have obvious issues of potential compatibility problems and update issues. Future updates might need things that you remove. It also wouldn't have SP1, which fixed a lot of the issues that the original win7 had. You might re-think this and start with a win7 enterprise sp1 image and just remove things from that.
Thanks for your kind reply Murphy78. This is why I prefer to 'alter' the N version as it is supported and SP1 can be installed it on later too. As for third party utilities, I don't think they strip out core components such as IE8 as it was implemented in E version (by Microsoft engineers). Or am I wrong? Also, does SP1 have IE related updates?
You could remove IE with a components removal program but I wouldn't recommend it as some system functions rely on the IE subsystem functionality. It also doesn't hog any resources as they're not running unless called. You really need to determine what you want to remove and why. If your only goal is to speed up the system, you install it in a vm and see which services are running, then figure out how to remove those (if you should) Services that are installed, but not running, doesn't slow the system down during runtime at all. If your goal is to simply reduce the footprint a good start is to remove all the other language data. For example, if you want to run an en-us system, all the other languages besides en-us that have files installed are useless if you never use them. Of course if someone else tried to install another lang on your image, they would have serious problems.
Actually I have found out that IE package is still present in the E edition as well as IE folder in program files. Most possibly it is just not set visible in Windows features list. Anyway, may I request the following iso, maybe someone has it still? 7600.16385.090713-1255_x64fre_enterprisen_en-us_VL_OEM_EnterpriseN-GRMCNENXVOL_EN_DVD.iso size: 2783163512 byte sha1: 04BD7B32AC8DB03D61CD090E28B099B5FE87850D md5: 2B0F6FB101FFAAEE1CEE55C97B93CB6B