Recently I used a tool called nLite to trim down a Windows XP installation and stream in drivers for all of the hardware in a particular customer’s inventory. nLite is a tool that lets you customize which parts of Windows are included in the install so you can deploy just the parts you need. Example: Your customers don’t need the Windows XP tour which is (STILL!) inexplicably the default in Windows XP nearly nine-years after initial release. If it was irritating in 2002, you can bet its infuriating now. I’m sure there’s probably a technical justification better than that, but that’s the one I’m going with for this particular moment. It also does give you the practical benefit of adding extra drivers to the default Windows XP install–no more “Unknown Devices” after installation if you play your cards right, and also permits the creation of an answer file to allow unattended install of Windows XP. If this sounds cool to you, but you’re on Vista, take heart–they’ve started work on vLite, which as you might have guessed supports trimming down Vista installs.