[VISTA] Reverse-engineering?

[transatlant1c]

Hi guys, just a topic for discussion: does anybody think that there is a way to reverse engineer some parts of Vista? I'm sure everybody's come across those versions of XP on the net, apparently mean to be slimmed down and faster to use.. Never tried one, probably never will. My point: has anybody had any success with Vista? What I'm specifically talking about is the annoying things like whenever you run a .exe file, it asks for confirmation (theres probably an option somewhere..), and the extreme amount of processes running in the background. The looks, feel and DX10 would stay, but.. Does anybody see my point?

[SoulsCollective]

I don't know about reverse-engineering, but I do know all about V-Lite (http://www.vlite.net/).

[Knight]

Hi guys, just a topic for discussion: does anybody think that there is a way to reverse engineer some parts of Vista? I'm sure everybody's come across those versions of XP on the net, apparently mean to be slimmed down and faster to use.. Never tried one, probably never will. My point: has anybody had any success with Vista? What I'm specifically talking about is the annoying things like whenever you run a .exe file, it asks for confirmation (theres probably an option somewhere..), and the extreme amount of processes running in the background. The looks, feel and DX10 would stay, but.. Does anybody see my point?

UAC is the thing that asks for permission all the time. Go into the Control Panel and click on Control Panel Home in the upper left corner. Type in UAC in the search at the upper right corner and you should now see the option to turn it off.

[Demo]

nLite is the tool they use to slim down XP, vlite is the tool for vista.. no reverse engineering required if you know your way around both softwares.

[RealRedRaider]

is vlite any good?

[clokker]

vLite (and nLite as well) is only as "good" as you are.
Like any tool really, these apps allow you to make decisions and take action and the end result can be great or a disaster, depending on your input.

On the simplest level, you can just slipstream drivers, Service Packs and installation keys/info (user name, etc.) which can really speed up install time.

Beyond that, you can start to rip out unneeded functionality (for instance, just how many keyboard layouts do you need to support?) but it starts getting tricky as Windows has highly integrated dependencies and removing a seemingly innocuous piece can have unintended consequences down the road.

I make a plain vanilla install- just adding drivers, etc.- that leaves the OS intact and use it as the baseline/backup disc.
Then I make increasingly radical versions to see how lightweight the install can be without breaking the features I need to work.

It's actually kinda fun (albeit time consuming) and gives you a greater appreciation for how the OS really works.

[Th3MadScientist]

i dont think there is any possible way to reverse engineer vista, plus its 50+ million lines of code :rolleyes:

vLite is good if you wish to strip Vista of all the multilanguage garbage, turn off services, slipstream drivers etc etc, really useful.

Most of the intricate stuff does not require reverse engineering, you can customize a good portion of the OS in the registry.

[B.E.E.F.]

Just wait for the source to be leaked again.

[Frostbyte]

Actually, what a lot of us are doing is running a stripped version of Windows Server 2008. No need to reverse engineer the past when the future looks better to begin with.

http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/ (http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/)
http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisedesktop/archives/2008/03/windows_worksta.html