These instructions are pretty old, things have probably moved on a little since I wrote them, use at your own risk.

The advent of Intel inside every Mac has opened up a world of convenience for me and every other web designer. Whether via Parallels or Bootcamp we are now able to launch Windows XP with relative ease so we can test in Internet Explorer or just see how a site looks in Windows. It also opens up a world of Windows gaming (as long as you’ve got a proper graphics card in your Mac) to which we previously had little access (Aspyr and MacSoft’s hard porting work excluded).

There are issues with running Windows despite the powerful new Macs, and the terrific engineering job of Parallels. The speed although good, is not great, and a typical non-updated install of Windows SP2 (with IE6) takes up nearly 2GB. This is before you install patches, IE7 and any other little Windows-only programs (Half-Life 2 I’m looking at you) you might need. This can mean things can get a bit crowded, particularly if you’re using a MacBook, with its limited hard disk capacity, as your main machine.

I’ve done some research into shrinking XP’s footprint, both in install time and ongoing space occupation. I checked out (and even registered) XPlite, a tool for ‘safely’ removing unnecessary functionality from an existing Windows install. I found it to be good, it unfortunately required the protracted process of installing Windows and then removing components of a running system . Additionally you only regained empty space on the existing large partition as Bootcamp partitions are fixed and Parallels VMs can only grow and not shrink (at I’m writing).

Strip it out before it starts

So I turned to nLiteOS, a windows installation customiser. This fitted with my experience of corporate IT departments with customised desktop builds; but instead of adding loads of corporate nonsense software to slow the new system down, we going to make a minimal install with only the bits we need!

This short series of articles is how to put together a little, streamlined install of Windows XP SP2 with IE7. Usual disclaimers about doing damage to your Mac/PC/existing installations apply. But you don’t really have to worry – it’s not rocket science. A seperate disclaimer should be that I’m using the latest Core 2 Duo iMac and have had no access to any other machines to test this process on and as such your milage may vary. I would be interested to hear of any successes you have with this process.

NB: I use a corporate key on my copy of Windows so there is no information on activation of slipstreamed copies of XP in this guide. I’d be interested to hear of experiences you have this method and then activating your copy of Windows. Drop me a note and I can amend this guide.

Preparation

Before we start you’ll need:

• A VALID, ORIGINAL Windows XP SP2 CD
• A blank CD for the new XP (optionally for those using Bootcamp you’ll need one for the drivers)
• An installed copy of Windows (Bootcamp or Parallels)
• To be connected to the Internet (Broadband advised!)

These instructions result in an install that will work for both Paralells and Boot Camp.

Off to Windows Land

You’ll need to be in Windows in order to run the nLiteOS program. So say goodbye to Mac OS X for a little while…

The first step is to copy the entire contents of the Windows Install CD to a folder in Windows (I normally call mine XPCD and put it on the desktop for easy access). While the copying is happening we’ll need do some downloading of ‘stuff’.

You’ll need:

• Runtimes for the .NET framework official ones from Microsoft (approx 22.4MB) alternatively you can get the unofficial ones from the the nLite download page at only 6.7MB
• nLite, the program itself (v1.3.0.4 at writing – approx 1.9MB)

You should also surf to RyanVMs Update Packs (about 3/4 of the way down the page for the downloads) to pick up:

• Ryan VMs Post SP2 Update Pack, a load of English only hot-fixes (v2.1.9 at writing) see RyanVM’s forums for non English versions
• WGA Addon, Windows Genuine Advantage (for IE7/Windows Update) (v.1.7.18.1 at writing)
• OPTIONAL DirectX 9.0c Addon, if you want to use your TinyXP for Bootcamp gaming (v1.3 at writing)

You’ll also want to pick up an install of IE7 which I discovered on this forum post. I used the patched ie7 cabfile mentioned in that thread as some posters reported issues with the original posted file.

I download all the files to the desktop, just for easy access.

Installing nLite

Open the nLite self-extracting archive you downloaded, accept the license agreement and extract to wherever you like (I stick with the default).

Now if you downloaded the official .NET runtimes install them as you’d expect, else drop the unofficials into the nLite installation directory. There should be an nLite icon on your desktop, you’ll want to click that to start the program!

On To Configuration

The next section on configuration of nLite gets a bit in depth so take a deep breath and enjoy.