Installing any version of Windows on a computer can prove to be a difficult task, especially if you are a novice. Things get even more complicated when you are an expert and you want to customize the operating system right from the installation stage.
NTLite is one of the apps professionals can rely on whenever they want to make sure the OS they are installing contains only the functions and components they want. It needs to be mentioned that those running an older version of Windows are advised to use nLite.
Due to NTLite, you can load a selected WIM image or load a directory where you have previously extracted ISO files and folders. Alternatively, you can start tweaking the operating system installed on your computer, while keeping in mind that removing any component could lead to unexpected crashes that can only be fixed by reinstalling the OS at a later time.
If you want to reduce the time it typically takes to install a Windows edition on your computer, you can strip several types of components so that they are no longer installed.
More precisely, you can remove various so-called Accessories tools (such as Screensavers, Paint, Character Map, Wordpad), drivers, languages, services, multimedia or network utilities.
Not only can you remove components, but you can also disable a wide range of features from your operating system, such as .NET Framework 3.5 or 4.5, Hyper-V, Internet Explorer 11, XPS Viewer or XPS Document Writer, as well as telnet client and server.
Additionally, you can also add some of your installed updates and language packs to your newly-created Windows image, to make sure it matches your exact expectations.
You also get to enable specific drivers, depending on the hardware devices you want to be supported.
The final step in creating a personalized OS image is to apply some tweaks meant to improve the user experience - you can enable or disable the first-logon animation, the automatic reboot on BSOD, or the User Account Control.
All in all, NTLite is a reliable and useful application for removing Windows components from a loaded image so as to obtain an improved OS edition, that installs in less time and requires less resources than a typical one. It should not be used by novices and the generated files should be tested before being installed on a production workstation.
