[spinecho]

Hi. Please accept my apologies if this has been discussed before.

I'm running Windows 7 with Frodo and happy so far. However my windows install is, I feel, getting a bit bloated! Time for a reinstall.
While I'm reinstalling I thought I might as well try to make it as sleek as possible by only installing Windows components that are necessary to run xbmc!

I mainly use my PC as a htpc.
The reason I use windows instead of a dedicated Linux install like xbmcbuntu is I prefer the user-friendliness of windows and because I use ember for scraping and therenamer.

Does anyone have a guide for a minimal windows 7 & xbmc guide?

Thanks

[PatK]

I think you're looking for tips to stream line your windows install and this being an XBMC forum, I can't see what off the top any software configuration or setting would be a significant improvement. Looking at http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=37492 would boot directly into XBMC and you might be able to have a boot chooser file, which would allow you to bring in the kitchen sink on demand.

For the most part windows is bloat, that's what happens when your get a team together to glue drivers into an O/S and pay the coders by the code lines produced, it get's big. (I have heard Win 8 is slightly more efficient, but this could be advertising hyperbole), I have noted that when I have no drives online and only using the library, there is little to no change in the responsiveness in XBMC, but when configured with a ram drive XBMC is close to 'instant' in response. Leading me to the conclusion that XBMC mounted on an SSD drive would be like greased lightning.

That said, there is room for streaming-ling XBMC itself, choosing a light skin without a lot of encumbrances like, extra graphics, slideshows on each page et on. Keeping thumbnails and fanarts within reason and in general keeping your graphics lean and gpu friendly. There's a lot of tips in these forums of which I'm not prepared to summarize atm, but check the wiki's and http://forum.xbmc.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=110