I have a feeling I might have asked this before but:

Has anybody ever tried this:

Making a lite version of Vista using Vlite,

Putting the Longhorn Fusion modified files into the install.wim file


So then, it would look like the user has installed Longhorn.

People often add custom themes to Vista's install.wim, most versions of Vista on the torrent network are loaded with custom theme's, imageres.dll's and basebrd.dll's and a whole lot more crap that does nothing other than stroke the ego of the person who created the monstrocity, and make Vista look as classy as Elvis.
That said, if your going to do anything with the Longhorn Fusion files, especially if you'll be posting/uploading this "thing" you intend to make, in a way that would make it publically available, Then you need to get the permission of the people who made it.

You mean Microsoft may try and stop it like they did with the Longhorn Reloaded project?

Lol, no, Microsoft won't give a [censored].
The people behind Longhorn Fusion would get [censored] off (and rightfully so) if you start screwing around with their resources, and taking credit for their work.

So lets say I use Resource Hacker to edit a file, say, imageres.dll for example, and after doing things like changing icons and images etc.... I change the copyright notice section so that instead of saying ''Copyright Microsoft Coporation'', it says ''Copyright Squidward'', and Microsoft somehow found out, I bet they would be pretty pssd off!

I doubt they'd give a [censored].

as long as you do not provide it as you work and you just use it for yourself there should be no problems mit ms ...

But if you modified a file like imageres.dll or shell32.dll would you put your own ''copyright'' on it.

They still wouldn't give a [censored].
Microsoft has more important thing's to do, than worry about one little person customising his/her system file's.

I noticed in Hounsell's protoplex project, he put something like ''Copyright 2008 Protoplex Project'', or something similar.

well in this case nobody can stop me from modifying vista to look like longhorn I mean change the setup etc