And it sounds like you are still using Windows 7 so I would say until you fully test this with Windows 10 and 11 now that people are starting to upgrade a safer option is to go with one of the many utilities out there who are made for this.
Even if it did work with Windows 10/11 there are many who may not feel like going through the steps of making this talking WinPE disk or drive and then using 7Zip which again most standard users don't have or need since Windows has a built-in zip utility and to then exclude these 2 other files you mention and so on.
This may be what you prefer because you enjoy tinkering with it, but I think most users want to run a utility which does the job and be done with it. I started out with computers probably around the same time as you or maybe even earlier and remember the days when all sorts of little tricks and modifications made things a little better, but I now sure enjoy an experience where I can basically install Windows out of the box without having to do a lot of stuff other than maybe changing a couple of things in File Explorer options, turning off fast startup or putting my user folder on the desktop etc.