Asked
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.
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
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...
Ah, well looks like there's an even easier way https://www.ntlite.com/
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?
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
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
Nice, did you happen to install all the Rock Pi X drivers in your ISO. Installing them can be a painful experience.
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