Excluding the OS/2 Subsystem

If you do not need support for OS/2 applications, you can exclude the files needed for OS/2 support by commenting them out in the .INF files that install them. If you do so and a user tries to start an OS/2 application, they will receive a message saying the executable file could not be located or that the subsystem is not available.

In the INITIAL.INF file, comment out the lines specifying the OS/2 files by prepending the lines with a semicolon (;), as shown in the following example:

[Files-I386-nt-system-os2-dll]
;2,DOSCALLS.DLL , SIZE=12341
[Files-I386-nt-system]
;2,NETAPI.DLL , SIZE=119808
;2,OS2.EXE , SIZE=53552
;2,OS2SRV.EXE , SIZE=206848
;2,OS2SS.EXE , SIZE=15360

In the DOSNET.INF file, comment out the lines specifying the OS/2 files by prepending the lines with a pound sign (#), as shown in the following example:

# d1,DOSCALLS.DLL 
# d1,NETAPI.DLL 
# d1,OS2.EXE
# d1,OS2SRV.EXE
# d1,OS2SS.EXE

In the TXTSETUP.SIF file, comment out the lines specifying the OS/2 files by prepending the lines with a semicolon (;).

If you are upgrading from an earlier version of Windows NT in which the OS/2 subsystem was used, list these same files in the [Files.DeleteOnUpgrade] section of the TXTSETUP.SIF file. Lines in this section use the following format:

file, dir

where file is the filename and dir is the code number that is assigned (in the [WinntDirectories] section) to the directory in which the file is found.