Installing vLite info

[Josef]

I'm trying to determine if there really is a significant worsening of sound re Win7 versus Vista

Me too but I can't find time to make a fresh install... Post your findings when you do!

I've heard Vlite mentioned here several times, where does one get it?

http://www.vlite.net/download.html

And any tricks or things to watch out for when dealing with it?

It's very simple and will guide you step by step. If you want to strip Vista to the bone so it's only good for music just do the following:

1. Specify folder where your original Vista ISO is and a folder where 'light' Vista will be put. vLite will copy all 2.46GB in there so make sure you have plenty of free disk space!
2. Tabs on left side will be activated (Tasks, Integration, Components etc).
3. Click Components: here you can select which components to remove permanently i.e. they will not even be on your new installation disk much less installed!
4. Select all these: Accessories, Drivers, Hardware Support, Languages, Multimedia
5. Open Network and select everything except "Link layer topology discovery" & "Quality of Service"
6. Open Services and select everything except "Desktop Window Manager" (XX will crash without this) "Diagnostics" (not strictly needed but allows you to see how 'quiet' is your system) "Multimedia Class Scheduler" (not needed for XX KS mode but if you want to also try e.g. Foobar then leave it - it's perfectly OK) "SSDP Discovery" "Universal Plug & Play" "User mode driver framework" (just in case if you have an older driver)
7. Open System and select everything except "Microsoft HTML Engine" "Performance Counters" "Reliability & Performance Monitor" (again, like 'Diagnostics" you don't strictly need these but they can help pinpoint issues)
8. Click Tweaks and set Security->DEP always off, System->Paging disabled, hibernation off, power scheme->high performance. Optionally set desired services to 'manual' but you can just leave it as is.
9. Click Unattended and fill in your key etc so you won't have to do it during install. Make sure you click 'Skip user creation' and leave Administrator password empty (it will boot faster as you won't have to type password)
10. Click Apply and you're done!
11. After 'light' Vista is created (it will take a while, go get a drink...) you can either copy resulting files to USB stick (note it has to be bootable otherwise it won't work!) or create an ISO and burn it to DVD (well, it might even fit on CD (!) Think mine is only 728MB - compare that with 2.45GB at start!)

Gotchas:
- If you have Vista 64bit you must run vLite on 64 bit OS.
- if you get errors when starting vLite you might need to copy wimgapi.dll to vLite folder, see here:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0fh-gJJnnp4J:setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php%3Fid%3D50222+vlite+missing+dll&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl
- I am not sure if vLite will work with Vista SP2 (have only used it with SP1)

After these steps you should have 0 stability issues with Vista and, in fact, you'll be hard pressed to find a difference compared to 2008.

[PeterSt]

Josef, thanks. A few additional (important) remarks :

Open Services and select everything except "Desktop Window Manager" (XX will crash without this) "Diagnostics" (not strictly needed but allows you to see how 'quiet' is your system)

0.9z-3 will use Diagnostics, I think up to the level you could let out here. So better have it in for safety.

Open System and select everything except "Microsoft HTML Engine" "Performance Counters" "Reliability & Performance Monitor" (again, like 'Diagnostics" you don't strictly need these but they can help pinpoint issues)

Here too, Performance Counters are used in 0.9z-3.

Edit : forgot one :

Click Tweaks and set Security->DEP always off, System->Paging disabled,

For 0.9z-3 it is advised to have Paging (Virtual Memory) On.


That's all I can think of.
Peter

[boleary]

Thanks Josef. Has anyone done a direct comparison of SQ between Vista Tweaked to Death per this forum and a vlite installation? Just wondering what the differences are.

[PeterSt]

I can tell that the theoretical differences will be rather large. This is because the "Tweaked to death" settings are about unnessecary I/O's only and nothing about unnessecary services in general. So to be sure I would apply the death stuff too.
Until proven that it won't be "adding" anything of course.

[Josef]

For 0.9z-3 it is advised to have Paging (Virtual Memory) On.

At the risk of sounding pedantic: You can never 'disable Virtual Memory' - it's not possible. You can only disable page file creation.
And this setting does not disable page file: rather, it disables paging of OS Kernel which is always safe to do as it is rather small (btw probably would have been in OS cache all the time anyway, but let's make sure).

Out of curiosity: What is the reason new version will recommend having a page file? (as: no page file = less I/O behind the scenes).
Is it because you are implementing that suggestion with having XXEngine constantly resident in RAM with potentially large cache and would like to avoid situations where users might run out of (virtual) memory? So I'd assume those of us who don't plan on using computer for anything else but music playback can leave it off, or...?

[Telstar]

Unless Roy comes out with some ISO already done, I'm going to try this with a Vista x64 ultimate SP2.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Unless Roy comes out with some ISO already done, I'm going to try this with a Vista x64 ultimate SP2.

No time at the moment, working 12 hours a day already
I have a dutch version still, need to get a english version of vista first.

Like said before: just strip most of the stuff you dont need, set unneeded services to manual, go from there.
I would be nice to have a fully stripped version of vista, because it saves space, but i dont believe it makes sense for SQ
to fully strip vista, just eliminate the bad stuff.

Roy

[PeterSt]

For 0.9z-3 it is advised to have Paging (Virtual Memory) On.

At the risk of sounding pedantic: You can never 'disable Virtual Memory' - it's not possible. You can only disable page file creation.
And this setting does not disable page file: rather, it disables paging of OS Kernel which is always safe to do as it is rather small (btw probably would have been in OS cache all the time anyway, but let's make sure).

I know, but I rather use the term Virtual Memory than something nobody can find since MS just calls it like that (at the parameter which it "shuts off" ).

Out of curiosity: What is the reason new version will recommend having a page file? (as: no page file = less I/O behind the scenes).

I explained it here : Re: SFS Solved (near the bottom, under "One more thing").
After you read that ... of course, if you set SFS way low enough that you won't ever reach the physical memory limit (deduct VM) it will be ok. But do notice that the difference with what you were used to (0.9z-2 and before) in a 2GB system is 1.2GB ...

Is it because you are implementing that suggestion with having XXEngine constantly resident in RAM with potentially large cache and would like to avoid situations where users might run out of (virtual) memory? So I'd assume those of us who don't plan on using computer for anything else but music playback can leave it off, or...?

Not quite (because not yet there), but even if it were, you won't be controlling what the OS wants to load after the lot (XXEngine3) is in memory. Well, as I explained.

Let me summarize it like this : You (Josef) will be able to deal with it because you quite know what you are doing. Others though may run out of memory after an hour of playing, and won't understand (but blame an unstable XX for it of course). Remember, a headroom of 1,2GB is a LOT, and before it could be used to capture for just those OS twirks (loading whatever it felt to). So, stay under that (with SFS applied) and you should be ok. But who is going to understand *that* ?

I want to avoid the discussion how "dangerous" (for unnecessary) IOs it is ... (so I state/claim nothing haha).

[boleary]

1. Specify folder where your original Vista ISO is and a folder where 'light' Vista will be put. vLite will copy all 2.46GB in there so make sure you have plenty of free disk space!

Okay, does this ("...folder where your original Vista ISO is....) mean that you copy the installation disk to a folder on the hard drive?

Just learnin'....but getting sorta geeky......,
O'Leary

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Hey Geeky O'Leary  , hehe

Its best to rip your vista image to hdd first, then make a copy of that image and save that as backup.
So start of with 2 folders 1 backup-folder and 1 to strip-down-folder.
This to avoid ripping vista to hdd each time you screw up a vLite version

\Roy

[boleary]

Thanks Roy!

[crisnee]

Thanks Josef, for the detailed response. Very sporting of you indeed. Of course, now I need to take advantage one more time, though I'm afraid you'll not be able to help on this front.

The main reason I went to Win2008, I don't have an original Vista OS disk, only recovery disks as I mentioned earlier. From what I can tell Vlite was not meant for them. I did a little bit of research on said topic but found no satisfactory info. Do you (or anyone for that matter) have any thoughts or should I just stay with Win2008 for my effort at comparison of Vista vs. Win7, re XX sound? (Of course eventually I'll have to buy Vista--which I'd like to avoid, if it comes up the definite winner).

Chris

[Josef]

Do you (or anyone for that matter) have any thoughts or should I just stay with Win2008 for my effort at comparison of Vista vs. Win7, re XX sound?

You'd need original Vista disk for vLite, yes (if you have a license key you may be able to download it from MS if, for example, you have an MSDN membership).

But if you already have Win2008, stick with it - as mentioned, binaries are identical to Vista SP1 so you can safely use it for comparison with Win7.

[boleary]

Like Ivo, I've had a heck of a time trying to get a bootable vlite 32 bit vista ultimate to boot. Spent all day last Thursday working on it without success. Really, given my level of computor knowledge, or lack thereof, I'm in over my head. I think I'll wait and see how things develope before I try again. Am wondering though if all the posts regarding this topic could be moved to this thread so it would all be in one place?

[PeterSt]

As with more things, I let them go until it's "official" and useable. So, at some stage I guess this one will be too and by that time it will be clear, if necessary by means of a new topic.

The whole problem is, that people are enthusiast at trying things for themselves, often not realizing it's nothing for "us". Btw, no problem to include me in the latter group, already because I don't want to spend the time on it.
It is indeed such a case where I tend to say "better listen to some music", knowing that in the end something will popup, but definite, which is somewhat different from ad-hoc trying to copy what others do or attempt, that possibly ending up in wasted time only. And then not only because of no results at all, but maybe already because of no good SQ.
Of course, if everybody only waits for others to come up with something, nothing much will happen, so it's not that message I like to spread. Just be careful not to dive into things which are over your head, while the problems you run into can't be solved by anyone (unless they are sitting on your lap).

On the other hand ... look what you can do now, you couldn't do a year back. So, it certainly is not wrong to go beyond your current knowledge, if you're only careful enough not to get stuck with a system which never runs anymore (so to speak).

2c
Peter