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How To: Adding Optional Components to Add/Remove Windows Components Tool in Windows XP

This topic is a how to.
Please keep it as clear and simple as possible. Avoid speculative discussions as well as a deep dive into underlying mechanisms or related technologies.

The Windows XP setup install the following components by default

  • Games
  • Accessories
  • Multimedia
  • Accessibility options

These items also do not appear in the Add/Remove Windows Components tool in the Add or Remove Programs applet of the Windows Control Panel after Setup is finished: if you want to display these and other items, you have to manually edit one of the operating systems .INF files.
In the %SYSTEMROOT%\Inf folder on the system volume, open a text editor (such as Notepad) to open the sysoc.inf file; locate the [Components] section and for each component to be displayed in the list of the installed Windows components remove the "hide" comment. For example, change

Games=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,games.inf,HIDE,7

with

Games=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,games.inf,,7

Do not remove the commas before and after the "hide" comment.
Save the file and open again the Add/Remove Windows Components tool in the Add or Remove Programs applet of the Control Panel to see all the Windows components that are available for adding or removal.


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