Admin Tip #5: Adding / Removing Windows 2000 Components

Hits: Failed to execute CGI : Win32 Error Code = 3

Windows 2000 setup installs by default the following components:

After Setup, these items are not available to Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs applet. Microsoft does not support modifying the .inf files used by Setup during installation but it does document how you can modify %systemroot%\Inf\Sysoc.inf to force these items to be displayed during Setup or after installation in the Add/Remove Programs applet. Using a backup copy of the sysoc.inf file, for each component you want to unhide, change the part of the line with ,HIDE, and delete the word HIDE, leaving the commas on either side.

Microsoft publishes that information in Q223182 .

You can also add / remove Windows 2000 components using the commandline tool Sysocmgr.exe which acts on sysoc.inf. It has the advantage that it can be used in unattended installation mode.

You can get a listing of options for sysocmgr by typing at the commandline sysocmgr.exe /? resulting in:


/i: <master_oc_inf> (required) specifies the name of the master inf.
                              Installation source path taken from here.
/u: <unattended_spec> specifies unattended operation parameters
/r suppresses reboot
/z indicates that args that follow are not OC args and should not be passed to components
/n forces master inf to be treated as new
/f indicates that all component installation states should be initialized as if their installers had never been run
/c disallow cancel during final installation phase
/x suppress "initializing" banner
/q use with /u
   runs unattended without UI
/w for use with /u
   if reboot required, prompt user instead of automatically rebooting
/l multi-language aware
Microsoft publishes detaileds for sysocmgr in Q222444 .

W2K includes OS/2 and Posix subsystems that are unused and add potential security problems. NT does not satisfy C2 security levels with these components installed. Are you running text mode OS/2 1.2 or POSIX applications? If not, you can remove them. Delete the \winnt\system32\os2 directory. Delete the files posix.exe and psxss.exe found in \winnt\system32. These files are not protected by Windows File Protection and will not reappear after you delete them.