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.