Windows XP W/O Extra Garbage?

I'm still working out my custom pc. I want two harddrives, one with linux gentoo, and one with windows xp. I'm going to use the linux drive for all things practical, IE browsing the web, word processing, etc. I'm going to use the XP drive solely for gaming. That said, I only need Windows for it's barest essentials. I want the operating system, and nothing else. Does anyone know if it's possible to get Windows without solitaire, Internet Explorer, and a billion other unwanted extras preinstalled? I only want windows xp in it's barest form, a platform for installing computer games on. If Linux supported a game of any merit, I wouldn't even need that much, but such is life.

I don't think it's easily possible, no. You can remove some things after installing everything, such as messenger, but I don't think the space gain would be worth it - either the things you can remove are very small, like Solitaire, or they're large and integrated into the OS rather heavily so can't be removed easily without breaking stuff, like IE. If anything, you'll end up adding stuff overall like newer versions of DirectX for newer games :p

IE is too integrated into XP itself to get rid of entirely. The most you can do is hide it. SP1 for XP lets you hide it and choose a different default browser. I forget if XP gives you an option to pick which "components" you want to install during the install of the OS; the earlier Windowses did. If not, after XP installs, you can Add/Remove Programs and remove all the Windows components you don't want. Getting rid of Solitaire and crap like that isn't going to save you many resources or anything.

EDIT: Darn it, you beat me.

Meh, I thought so. Well, I only wanted to play Civ III/expansions and Age of Mythology/expansions. Not worth the hassle that Windows has given me. Very well - my computer will be Linux only. For anyone who's curious, this is the computer I've put together. I don't need two harddrives with only Linux running. I'm buying it from www.pugetsystems.com for about $1900.00.

Case: Chenming 601 Mid Tower

OS: Linux Gentoo

Motherboard: Asus K8V Athlon 64 DDR400

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 64-bit

Ram: 1.5GB DDR400 CL2.0 (3x512MB)

Harddrive: Seagate 36GB 15k RPM U320 SCSI

Videocard: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB

Soundcard: Sound Blaster Live! Audigy

CD Rom: Lite On 52x/32x/52x CDRW

Communications: 10/100 Network Card

Powersupply: Enermax 300W Power Supply

Cooling: Thermaltake SilentBoost K8 (Athlon64)

You should get an nvidia video card, but it still looks way better than my computer.

with the spec of that comp and the games you want to play it would seem that you have overkill power for running a windows emulator to run they games on a linux only system :)