Am I correct in thinking that xpe-custom.inf is for adding things to XPE and to remove things it's necessary to directly modify xpe.inf? I want to remove as much of MS Internet Explorer and Outlook as possible. Unless Visual Basic is required for some of the other plugins I don't want it around either. Do I need to modify xpe.inf and just comment out everything in the IE sections?

I've already experimented with commenting out shockwave flash and so far it looks OK. My use of BartPE doesn't require the ability to surf the web at all and if I really need to add that capability in I'll use Mozilla or Opera. In no case will I permit shockwave flash to be on my computers, PE or no PE.

Thanks for the help, these forums are wondeful.

Just replace the file list in xpe.inf with:

[SourceDisksFiles]
console.dll=2
davclnt.dll=2
drprov.dll=2
hosts=17
shdoclc.dll=2
mlang.dll=2
mlang.dat=2
shfolder.dll=2
clbcatq.dll=2
comres.dll=2
jscript.dll=2
mshtml.tlb=2
mshtml.dll=2
msxml.dll=2
msxmlr.dll=2
advpack.dll=2
msrating.dll=2
mydocs.dll=2
cscui.dll=2
cscdll.dll=2
iernonce.dll=2
browselc.dll=2
comdlg32.dll=2
diskcopy.dll=2
ntshrui.dll=2
odbc32.dll=2
odbcint.dll=2
urlmon.dll=2
webcheck.dll=2
vssapi.dll=2
stdole32.tlb=2

I'll give that a try. That's along the lines of what I was thinking.

as i understand xpe is localized... so if your language is in english u could prolly remove non english fonts etc

I have a working CD and then disabled ERD Commander 2003 plugin and now I have lost desktop program icons. They are now replaced by all folder and file icons for the i386 folder. I didn't make any changes to XPE plugins. Anyone got any ideas. The nu2 menu start button is behind Windows taskbar. Should I disable Nu2 ?

You need to explorer some of the settings in xpe-custom.inf. That shows you have to position the taskbar.

Taskbar Ok but still can't get the program icons on desktop - only icons of all the files and folders from i386 (strange) Also no program shortcuts in Start/Programs (empty) I had the same problem once with True Explorer and switched back to XPE. Looks like it might be time to go back to Nu2.

I just went through all my plugins and removed over 40Mb of the same files!!! What I mean is that the same files were copied in many folders and in system32.
For example msvbvm60.dll and MSCOMCTL.OCX - both are 1Mb and I found both in 6 plugins. So only these two gave me 10Mb free space on the CD.
I did not realize that until I switched to SP2 and notice that some files are old versions from SP1 and even older.
I suggest everybody that needs more space to clean the plugins.

Additionaly, you may use exe-packers, such as upx, but this is a last way - some prorams working after upx, some not work... Also, you may compress some dll in system32 folders. Now, i have a compressed shell32.dll. 7,92Mb ->2,33Mb. 5Mbytes free... Nero.exe ver. 6.3.x.x after UPX reduce to 3,27Mbytes...

And you may pack dlls in WINSXS folder, but again, some programs may not work correctly (for example, Total commander)

Yes, I did UPX some programs but I prefer not to, because the memory requirements of such programs are higher. I use mostly RAR for large plugins like office, Opera, Firefox and other. (Not SFX).

hmm, if your only using xpe for the lack of resource limits, why not just use PELoader by theTruth. Looks like it would save you a lot of headaches.

Of course, the way to registry customize resolution is good, but if videoadapteris very old? and work only in 640*480? FOr this situation Pe ingnore/override registry values and boot in 640*480?