Perhaps. I do remember fiddling with an XP machine in an attempt to whittle it down, years ago; this was a tool I have considered. It may not be very practical

Perhaps. I do remember fiddling with an XP machine in an attempt to whittle it down, years ago; this was a tool I have considered. It may not be very practical though: someone with good understanding of both XP and business requirements needs to modify and test the image, which costs a lot of time. Unless you have hundreds of XP workstations (or loads of free time), I wouldn't bother. Alas, I wouldn't go that way now, unless I really, really had no other sane choice but stay with XP. That was the case in 2005, but not today (I understand the case for embedded systems and/or specialized SW; this is generally not the case for most users - and "we absolutely need IE" is, thankfully, no longer a majority issue).