winstall

Hi there, today I'll write about how I set up a Windows 8.1 virtual machine (VM). As for why windows 8.1 and not 7 or 10 or anything else? I'll say why in a bit, until then here's what you may need to begin, and you may need more later

Why did I chose windows 8.1?? there's a few reasons: (click to expand)
This is an OS I never tried on 'bare metal', it's not Windows 8 (8 is bad, 8.1 is good, 10 is bad) ; and windows seems to be headed more and more towards UWP or winUI or whatever they're calling it this week and those things don't really work on custom shells (you can use something other than Explorer for the taskbar and other things) or at least that's what I've noticed. And 8.1 seems to be a 'weird' in-between 7 and 10 that I'm curious if things work as expected. I also wanna use the classic 'theme' and win7 has a thing where things aren't rendered 'properly' with the classic 'theme' because it's not using DWM and you can notice things being slower, but win8 and later don't have that problem due to how the classic 'theme' is enabled. basically, I kinda wanted to try something new, from the OS to the things I wanna do with it ^^

VM Setup

I assume you know how to make the VM and how to load the ISO. Here's some of the specs I gave:
2GB RAM, 2CPU, 128MB Video Memory, 3D acceleration, 60GB (dynamic) storage, one shared folder as read-only. I also disabled the network adapter because we don't need Internet at this time (you know where to enable it if you ever need it again)

After I loaded the ISO I let windows just take up the whole space, and here you can just create a local account (wow!), I disabled updates because I don't wanna be sitting for days to install them, and after some mins you're shown the desktop (but with the wrong resolution), but we're not done yet

get the vcredist thing somewhere in the host PC and make the folder shared. Load up the Guest Additions ISO and install it, then open a command prompt and write net use X: \\vboxsvr\vcredist, replace X with whatever letter you want, and vcredist with the folder name, then go to it and install it (Alternative: make an ISO out of the folder and load it like that if that didn't work). dot-NET 3.5 wants to be installed from the Windows ISO, so we'll do that, open a command prompt as Administrator and write this 

dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /All /Source:D:\sources\sxs /LimitAccess

(replace D with the letter where the CD went), then also install dot-NET 4 and DirectX

Restart to see if it still works if you'd like to (then shutdown and clone the VM, just in case)

Disable things

Next we'll disable some Services and Tasks that I don't need. open services.msc and set these to Disabled

and these to Manual or Disabled

Disable DCOM:
open comexp.msc in Command Prompt or whatever
Component Services -> Computers -> My Computer -> Right Click -> Properties
Default Properties tab
uncheck Enable Distributed DCOM on this computer

Then go to taskschd.msc and disable these

Restart again and we're using less RAM than before ^^

I wanted to use something to set the resolution to 960x720 but nothing I used made it work, so we'll have to edit some XML file in a bit ;w;

Windows Classic Theme

I followed a tutorial to enable the Windows Classic "theme" at winclassic.net and I'll try to repeat here some of it

go to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon set Userinit to schtasks.exe /run /tn "Classic"

go to C: and make folder named Classic, put ClassicThemeTray in it
from Task Scheduler (taskschd.msc), make a task and name Classic
set to run as Admin
In actions put these
C:\Classic\ClassicThemeTray.exe /enable
schtasks.exe /run /tn "Classic2"
Make another task and name Classic2 In actions put this
cmd /c start userinit.exe

Right click on Desktop, go to Personalization -> Colors and make it opaque

put fixstrips in C:\Classic, then go to shell:startup and make a shortcut to it

go to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes and rename or delete DefaultColors

with UPMCalc set bit 17

also I use my own theme at github.io but it doesn't 'just work' yet; you have to copy aero.theme from c:\Windows\Resources to somewhere, open it with Notepad, and add my colours at the end. then open it

Additional Customization

normally, the desktop and taskbar and maybe some other things are part of Explorer in winlogon but I changed that to BlackBoxWM. I used to just close Windows Explorer because for some reason that makes things faster (and it's noticeable enough for me), but instead of doing that I can switch to something else, and keep the 'notification area' because some programs need that
There's also more settings in Control Panel to look into, and something called Winaero Tweaker, I'll try to add to this. some things that I digged into the registry one day and forgot, can be set with Winaero Tweaker, but we'll do that after

Most of the following options are in Control Panel -> Small/Large Icons

Display -> Adjust ClearType Text or cttune in Command Prompt
(uncheck Turn on ClearType and click Next and then Finish)

Folder Options -> View tab

Mouse -> Pointers tab
Select Windows Black

Notification Area Icons
Turn off what's not needed

Personalization
Sounds -> No Sounds
Screen Saver -> None

Programs and Features
Turn features on or off
Disable everything except .NET, Internet Explorer, Media Features, and PowerShell

Region -> Administrative tab -> Change system locale
Japanese (Japan)

System -> Advanced system settings (sysdm.cpl)
Advanced tab
Performance -> Settings
Visual effects tab

Advanced tab
Virtual memory -> Change
Uncheck automatic
Check custom size -> Set to 512 both
(Or check No paging file)

System Protection tab
Configure -> Disable

Remote tab
Uncheck Allow

Taskbar
Navigation tab -> Uncheck most things

Troubleshooting -> Change settings
Disable

Windows Defender
Settings -> Administrator
uncheck Turn on

Windows Update -> Change settings
Never

Action Center
Change Action Center Settings
Problem reporting settings -> Change for all users -> Never

Change User Account Control settings
Notify, no dim (because dim is laggy for me)

Change SmartScreen settings
warn or turn off

External links

for the things

Final thoughts

There's still a few more things I have done after, to make some games work, this is just a base to give you a start ^^
Next we'll look into what other things I use for editing and whatnot
And maybe some additional things that you may or may not need

Let's go to next page (TODO) or let's go home