XPLite

[BRH]

Has anyone used this product (XPLite)? (Website is www.litepc.com) If
so, what has its effect been on your system's performance? I'm not
pushing this product -- just curious about it.

Thanks.

 

[R. McCarty]

I've tested it. Basically it takes out components that are not
critical to the operation of XP. It makes the size of the XP
install or instance smaller. As to performance benefits that's
doubtful. Many things it does, you can accomplish yourself
by researching the command line uninstalls, such as the one
for Windows messenger shown below:
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove

 

[BRH]

Although performance isn't improved, reducing the size of my XP
installation size would be nice. Does it provide a complete explanation
of what it's about to uninstall, and/or rank a component's importance
somehow?

I'm sure that each component can be manually uninstalled without this
program but I guess that the benefit would be ease-of-use, right?

Any negatives to it that you could tell? I just want to be reasonably
certain that it won't irreparably screw up my system. (I'm considering
running the trial version to test it out.)

Thanks.

 

[R. McCarty]

As with any changes to your XP/Personal Data, if you use an image
program and verify the backup, your risk with trying or using trials or
Beta's or RegCleaners is near zero percent. $50 and perhaps 30 mins
a week and you can rest easy that no matter what happens you can
restore back to a earlier state. Personally, I use an older version of
Drive Image 6.0 that runs from a bootable CD-R disk. I can image or
restore my System Partition in about 6 minutes or less. So, when I try
something out if the results are negative - I just restore my last image
to the machine. Worth mentioning, I place all my personal data onto
a separate disk so restoring Windows doesn't impact things like Favs
or My Documents and allows my System partition use to stay small at
around 3.2 Gigabytes.

 

[Harry Ohrn]

The trial version has a large number of limitations and doesn't give you
much of a feel for it. The full version app strips out, or disables,
components from a list. It is like a tweaking app. The gains are not much.
Personally it is no where near what the author had done for streamlining
Windows 98 with "98lite" if you were familiar with that tool.

I'd suggest you make a full system backup before you tinker with this thing
too much.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Although performance isn't improved, reducing the size of my XP
installation size would be nice.

Why? It probably saves a few pennies worth of disk space at the
most.

Does it provide a complete
explanation of what it's about to uninstall, and/or rank a
component's importance somehow?

I'm sure that each component can be manually uninstalled
without this
program but I guess that the benefit would be ease-of-use,
right?

Any negatives to it that you could tell? I just want to be
reasonably
certain that it won't irreparably screw up my system. (I'm
considering running the trial version to test it out.)

Although I have no actual experience with it, in my view, the
risk of such a product screwing up something is substantially
greater than any possible benefit it might impart. Moreover, even
if it didn't screw up anything now, who know what happen with a
Windows update in the future if it doesn't find something that's
supposed to be there.

Personally I wouldn't go near a product like this.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

As with any changes to your XP/Personal Data, if you use an
image
program and verify the backup, your risk with trying or using
trials
or Beta's or RegCleaners is near zero percent.

I don't agree. The problem is that sometimes issues with a
product like XPLite or "trials or Beta's or RegCleaners" don't
show up right away. If issues show up a while down the road, and
you've made other changes or installed other software since then,
there's no way to restore the backup without also losing
everything else that's happened in the interim. In fact, one of
the things I fear with something like XPLite is that problems
with it may not appear until subsequent Windows updates are
released.

I certainly agree that if you try a product like this, it's
prudent to image the drive first. That lessens the risk
substantially, but it doesn't make it anywhere near zero.