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Create A Custom Windows 10 Lite Image

Has anyone seen this before? I found a few videos but this one seems to be the most detailed. I come across Windows 10 Lite often, where someone makes a custom windows 10 installer that excludes a bunch of stuff to make it smaller. Always wondered how they were made - and now i know. While it does look like a lot of steps, it's not actually that difficult. I'm going to try it today and see if i can make a small windows 10 image for an SBC. 


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Synthiam
#1  
Oh here's another that compresses the steps to be easier to follow. Although, this video doesn't get interesting until the 3:35 mark
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Synthiam
#2   — Edited
Wow, that was easy! So the first video made it look like a lot of steps. The second video sure made it clear. All you have to do is download the ISO, convert the ESD file to a WIM, and use Wintoolkit to modify it.

I got wintoolkit from here: https://m.majorgeeks.com/files/details/win_toolkit.html

The WinToolkit has options to download the ISO and everything for you. It looks like the Wintoolkit will do everything without needing to download anything else - but I followed the original instructions. 

I'm at the stage of removing the components I selected, which seems to take the Wintoolkit program forever! It's been going at it for about 15 minutes...

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#4  
Interesting.

I just installed win 10 pro on my Rock Pi X SBC, optimized it with your tips and installed your driver pack. 

What advantage would installing a lite version of windows have other then taking up less space? 

Would we still have to optimize and install your driver pack?
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Synthiam
#5   — Edited
The drivers are unrelated to performance. A driver is a little program that allows hardware to work with software. 

Having a Lite version of windows will remove programs to improve performance and decrease memory usage. It means the SBC will run faster with a Lite version of Windows
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Synthiam
#6   — Edited
I used the Win Tool Kit free app rather than the ntlite paid one. Last night I took a windows ISO file from the Microsoft website. I extracted the contents into a folder. Converted the ESD file to a WIM file. Then I used the Win Tool Kit program to select the components I wanted to remove.

Low and behold, my installation of windows on a Rock Pix went smooth. On boot (before loading ARC), one GB of RAM is being used out of 4GB. It seems to run faster than my other Rock Pix; I'll have to check, though. 

The thing I noticed is the metro apps are gone. There was no junk like solitaire or paint or anything. It was all gone. But even though I selected no print spooler, it seemed to be there. I also selected NO to a few things that seemed to install still. I'm guessing Microsoft forces some of that stuff.

You can use my ISO from here: https://synthiam.com/Support/Tips-to-Make-a-Robot/windows-lite-for-ARC
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Canada
#7  
Nice, did you happen to install all the Rock Pi X drivers in your ISO. Installing them can be a painful experience.
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Synthiam
#8  
No. There’s many sbcs id have to support. Latte panda. Up board. Rock pi. Atomic pi. Raspberry pi. That would take me for ever lol
#9   — Edited
Great tutorial. I'm doing this now on my old computer and i really hope to reduce that number of processes to the windows 7 level. I want to know which feature is required to keep the Microsoft account as i need it for some Xbox games like Forza. The rest i can remove and i will keep only what i need.
my website
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USA
#10  
I have a New Panda I can try out
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Synthiam
#11  
Is the new panda a new version? Is it faster than the previous one. 

also if you’re not using blockly, there’s an option to disable it on the latest early access release. It’s much faster without it and used half the ram
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USA
#12  
It’s a V1 4gb Ram 64gb emmc version. Hey more system resources would be great.
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here is a picture for all the kids not familiar with the OG panda.
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Synthiam
#13  
Ah okay. I like the built-in arduino on the panda. BTW they really like having a fan because the cpu throttles a bit. Here's the firmware and info about ARC with the panda: https://synthiam.com/Support/Hardware/LattePanda

I think there's a live hack in there as well that i did with it. Showing how to set it up and stuff.
#14  
Has anyone done this on 32bit?
I would like to try but unsure which components to remove?

Thanks
PRO
Synthiam
#15  
Haha - I just removed stuff until it broke and then backed off a bit. But mostly the stuff I didn’t remove had a warning not to remove it. The program is pretty good at not letting you break windows too badly. 

I did notice that even after removing some stuff, they came back. I think trying to remove windows update is the big one but seems almost impossible. Especially since it’s tied to driver downloads. So without windows update, I don’t think the computer can install drivers for stuff.
#16  
Ok ... lol.
Will give it a try then.

Thanks
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Synthiam
#17  
Let me know what you end up with if you try it. I'm unsure what's happening with Windows 10 now that Microsoft is pushing the new Windows 11 Vista. I use the new Vista on one machine, but only out of a need to test ARC on it. I refuse to use it because they changed too much, and it affects my productivity. The fonts are smaller and altered - the menus are smaller and different. The taskbar groups everything together and no longer has words for the programs. It's pretty much unusable for anyone that does stuff, haha.
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