26 replies to this topic

[Mikorist]

Anyone up for a bit of competition?
I have 100mb XP and superfast!
also:
7 mb win98
windows 2000 90mb

[TheHive]

Anyone up for a bit of competition?

Not much for competition on my part. lol. Maybe someone else.
But if your interested in sharing your knowledge with Windows to make things smaller and inprove peoples experience when building there Bootable ISO using WinBuilder. Then and Welcome aboard.

I have 100mb XP and superfast!
also:

Is this a bootable ISO CD or is this a 100MB installation to the HarDrive. If you use Winbuilder with its default Standard Scripts you can get a 50 MB or less bootable or RAM Driven ISO.

7 mb win98

Sounds good. I have something similar. It was created using the works of Winimize when he was working on his project. I miss his work. Here is his page: http://winimize.com/
I was able to create that 18 Meg Win 98 using his project. It also had net access.

You seem to have extended experience with Shrinking Win98. If your up for a challenge. It would be cool if you could create WinBuilder Scripts that will Build your version of win98 and letting the user use there own Version of Windows 98 CD as the source.

windows 2000 90mb

Same challenge as windows98 above. I have a WIndows 2000. But i haven used it in a while. it would be also cool if we had it running and bootable using Scripts and the users Source CD.

[Mikorist]

for windows XP and windows 2000
i have my Scripts for boot from cd and hdd
i have on that boot cd`s all my drivers
programs and i can go to internet
from internet explorer.
for win98 i use http://www.etek.chal.../~e8gus/nano98/
this tell me Jaclaz
also i have papy linux:
http://www.puppyos.com/
The live-CD is about 50-70M...

[TheHive]

for windows XP and windows 2000
i have my Scripts for boot from cd and hdd
i have on that boot cd`s all my drivers
programs and i can go to internet
from internet explorer.

Are you giving any tought to converting them to WinBuilder Scripts. Build your own Winbuilder Project.

for win98 i use http://www.etek.chal.../~e8gus/nano98/
this tell me Jaclaz

I tried to follow that once but I found I could not get it to work right. So I went with Winimize method which made it easier to do.
As you can see from this thread at the 911 CD forum
http://www.911cd.net...p;hl=Windows 98

also i have papy linux:
http://www.puppyos.com/
The live-CD is about 50-70M...

Thats an ugly puppy. lol! Can you post a picture of how it looks when booted up. I have tried alot of bootable linux CDs. I found SLAX to be very modular and good looking when its booted up. Its a bit bigger.
This Slax Live CD is what I call a beautiful piece of work. It has modules which add the things you want. For example apps or drivers. Its the best ive found. Mainly for its Modular Architecture. Similar to WinBuilder. It has a foundation and from there it can grow. I guess that why you see me here.
http://www.slax.org/

[Mikorist]

I have SLAX to and many more systems
but this is not topic about me.
I work now to make bonsai unix
i dont like much windows,linux...

[TheHive]

but this is not topic about me.

Sure it is. We just met you.

I work now to make bonsai unix

I havent heard of bonsai unix before. What is it?
Ive heard of Unix but havent seen it.

[Mikorist]

I love to give name to
netbsd bonsai...
http://www.netbsd.org/
I love Xen virtual machines...
And work nice on my machine!

[TheHive]

Ill take a look at it. Thanks!

[Mikorist]

And take a look at:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.../SRG/netos/xen/
http://www.cl.cam.ac.../downloads.html
this is bonsai!

[TheHive]

Its a bit over my head but I get a better grasp of what it is now. I think thats what Intel and AMD are doing when including that Virtual thing in there Chips.

The
http://www.cl.cam.ac.../SRG/netos/xen/

gives me a better understanding. Even though the http://www.netbsd.org/
shows pictures.

I was thinking it was a similar to Linux.

[Mikorist]

Yes netbsd is like linux but source code is unix.
I use small netbsd to start xen.
Or you can do that from the GRUB bootloader.
That netbsd not have picture..
This is only for start xen.
And Xen is bonsai for systems...
That is all to can tell you now...

[TheHive]

Thanks!

[was_jaclaz]

Now if you are looking for a TINY linux, what about this:
http://fabrice.bella...cc/tccboot.html
by the author of Qemu, a bootloader that can COMPILE a linux kernel from SOURCE!

Or the smallest linux based computer in the world, picotux:
http://www.picotux.com/
http://www.picotux.com/producte.html
a computer in a RJ45 connector!


jaclaz

[Mikorist]

This is amazing!

[Yorn]

I was able to get a version of XP down to about 9 meg compressed but required 7zip and Freedos for a total of about 11.7 meg. Nuno actually came up with the method using HX-DOS to run 7zip in a such a small space. The only problem is that the whole thing pretty much requires a thumbdrive partitioned in a certain way or a harddrive that the OS can be extracted to, then GRUB4DOS runs it. I was tinkering around with making 7zip file and renaming them 7zb for 7zip-Boot. But again, it'd require a thumbdrive partitioned in two locations or a CD+thumbdrive to be worthwhile.

[Moon Goon]

Another aspect is: what defines a useable boot environment? NanoXP could only run Win32 console stuff which did not make it useful in the real world. I say the bar should be that most GUI mode apps work. For a real challenge, maybe Explorer itself works.

[Brito]

Well at least cmd.exe provides acess to ntfs volumes and can run a few console apps..

Running explorer is more challenging - zharif has done quite a lot of advances on this, he didn't went for explorer as shell, but I think he was pretty close.

The main size gain on nano/picoXP is shell32.dll wich is replaced with a dummy file wich prety much removes all support for GUI applications.

Since now it is possible to compress shell32.dll with UPX without making it unusable, this can likely open the way to more minimal boots..

[Draugen]

since we're talking about a windows installation source (that's how I read the opening post), the bar would hvae to be set at 'Windows installs successfully".

I've pondered a bit on how small an ISO one could get and still completing a Windows (200/xp/2003) install procedure without errors.. A project for when i have too much time i guess (which probably means not in the near future ).

[Moon Goon]

If that was the bar someone needs to locate what is running during the second half of the text mode NT install. At that point DOS seems to go away and the NT drivers take over. Maybe it can be subverted into providing an NT DOS console instad of proceeding with the install..

@Martin You are right. I was thinking about what happens when you run WINNT. DOS is still there until the screen goes into the "hi-res" text mode in which that setupdd.sys must take over. I think DOS is still there during WINNT.EXE because it complains if SMARTDRV is not loaded. Maybe, just maybe the recovery console could be replaced with the full blown DOS shell? Replace is easier than hacking new features

[Draugen]

If that was the bar someone needs to locate what is running during the second half of the text mode NT install. At that point DOS seems to go away and the NT drivers take over. Maybe it can be subverted into providing an NT DOS console instad of proceeding with the install..

umm... text-mode NT setup is almost entirely controlled by SETUPDD.SYS. DOS is never involved at all. SETUPLDR.BIN unpacks basic drivers (what happens after the 'Setup is checking your hardware' message), and then passes control to setupdd.sys, which lets you format/partition disks etc. Then, setup files are extracted to the HD, registry hives are generated from the hive???.inf files, and the system is rebooted. After reboot, we're in a nearly complete win32 environment.

'Subverting' setupldr.bin (to call something else than setupdd.sys) or setupdd.sys (to do something completely different - i.e. a command prompt similar to the recoverly console) would be kewl. but then one sould rather look into modifying the recovery console to provide more functionality IMO.

[Yorn]

Yeah. I'd have to say that the recovery console is probably the ultimate way to go tiny with an XP distro. I'm not even smart enough to know where to begin, but I guess modding setupdd.sys to do something else might be the start. That would be a *real* FemtoXP (femto coming after pico, and atto coming after femto) build.

[abccells]

dear experts
where i can get the completed win98 and win xp live cd editions?
plz pardon me if was wrong as i am a novice to computers a bit...
jai

[abccells]

dear experts
where i can get the completed win98 and win xp live cd editions?
plz pardon me if was wrong as i am a novice to computers a bit...
jai

[TheHive]

dear experts
where i can get the completed win98 and win xp live cd editions?
plz pardon me if was wrong as i am a novice to computers a bit...
jai

Welcome to the board abccells,
There is no completed Win98 Scripts. And there is no Completed Win XP Live CD edition. You have to have your own WIndows XP CD to build a working Live XP CD using the Scripts inlcuded with Winbuilder.

If you want to download Winbuilder look the left side and look for the Downloads link.

[abccells]

thanks hive
thanks

jai