[clivebuckwheat]

Is it possible to compress Winpe 3.0 so it has faster load times over a network boot?

[joakim]

A wim packed with maximum compression is rather hard to beat.

I doubt you will find anything better..

Joakim

[Tripredacus]

What kind of speeds are we talking about here? I haven't timed mine on a PXE boot but its about 4 minutes, and weighs in a little under 200MB.

EDIT: also, I wanted to add, do you mean the TFTP speed or the total time from F12 until the PE finishes loading on the client?

[joakim]

Rumours have it that booting over HTTP outperforms TFTP in terms of transfer speed over network, but I've not yet seen comprehensive and detailed test results/measurements for this..

Joakim

[Tripredacus]

joakim, on 12 March 2010 - 09:45 AM, said:

Rumours have it that booting over HTTP outperforms TFTP in terms of transfer speed over network, but I've not yet seen comprehensive and detailed test results/measurements for this..

Joakim

The results of those tests might also depend on the network and the server's capabilities. My server's TFTP speed is less than 10 seconds, I'd like to say 6 seconds but I haven't timed it, just a guess.

[Eagle710]

How would you compress the wim file. In WinPE 2 there was a command yet in WinPE 3 I cannot find the command or argument to pass in order to compress maximum. Any ideas?

[Tripredacus]

In Windows 7 WAIK, DISM does not do everything. Some functions such as Export are still done with Imagex.

imagex /export D:\imaging\data.wim 1 D:\imaging\sample.wim
DISM /Cleanup-Wim

I believe after you export the WIM, you mount the image with DISM before running the cleanup.

http://technet.micro...28WS.10%29.aspx
http://technet.micro...28WS.10%29.aspx

[Eagle710]

I thought for creating WIMs in WinPE 3 you could only use dism? Can you still create wim files for WinPE 3 using images as I have done for WinPE 2?

[Tripredacus]

Well the things that DISM can't do, Technet seems to say use Imagex.exe for those. For example, DISM does not have an export WIM option. That part was on a different page I looked up. I wonder why they keep Imagex around, or maybe some day in the future DISM will totally replace it?

[Eagle710]

Tripredacus, on 19 March 2010 - 02:39 PM, said:

Well the things that DISM can't do, Technet seems to say use Imagex.exe for those. For example, DISM does not have an export WIM option. That part was on a different page I looked up. I wonder why they keep Imagex around, or maybe some day in the future DISM will totally replace it?

The only command removed then was peimg. So if I have WAIK 3 installed I could still edit WinPE 2images using imagex? I just cant add drivers I suppose unless the dism can modify WInPE 2 files?

[Tripredacus]

No unfortunately you can't service a Vista image with the 7 WAIK. At first, I got around this by using Win7 Tools on my main Server and put Vista Tools on another one. Eventually I ended up putting my WinPE 2.x boot images into retirement and created all new WinPE 3.0 images for deployment. But no, now I have Vista images (or even XP) that I can't do anything with besides regular image maintenance like mount/unmount and export/delete. I cannot put drivers into Vista images, so if I need to make one I have to use my unattend DVD each time. I still have some generic SP1 images I can use, but early on somehow I corrupted my Vista Ultimate image with DISM and had to delete it.

As far as my job goes, Vista was never very popular, and once Windows 7 went RTM no one wants Vista, so I kinda lucked out. Its actually funny now, if I see a system come through with Vista on it, I go and make sure someone didn't make a mistake!

[Eagle710]

Tripredacus, on 21 March 2010 - 11:48 AM, said:

No unfortunately you can't service a Vista image with the 7 WAIK. At first, I got around this by using Win7 Tools on my main Server and put Vista Tools on another one. Eventually I ended up putting my WinPE 2.x boot images into retirement and created all new WinPE 3.0 images for deployment. But no, now I have Vista images (or even XP) that I can't do anything with besides regular image maintenance like mount/unmount and export/delete. I cannot put drivers into Vista images, so if I need to make one I have to use my unattend DVD each time. I still have some generic SP1 images I can use, but early on somehow I corrupted my Vista Ultimate image with DISM and had to delete it.

As far as my job goes, Vista was never very popular, and once Windows 7 went RTM no one wants Vista, so I kinda lucked out. Its actually funny now, if I see a system come through with Vista on it, I go and make sure someone didn't make a mistake!

LOL....awesome how you cant update Vista images with WAIK 7. They should have made them universal.

[Tripredacus]

Eagle710, on 22 March 2010 - 09:11 AM, said:

Tripredacus, on 21 March 2010 - 11:48 AM, said:

No unfortunately you can't service a Vista image with the 7 WAIK. At first, I got around this by using Win7 Tools on my main Server and put Vista Tools on another one. Eventually I ended up putting my WinPE 2.x boot images into retirement and created all new WinPE 3.0 images for deployment. But no, now I have Vista images (or even XP) that I can't do anything with besides regular image maintenance like mount/unmount and export/delete. I cannot put drivers into Vista images, so if I need to make one I have to use my unattend DVD each time. I still have some generic SP1 images I can use, but early on somehow I corrupted my Vista Ultimate image with DISM and had to delete it.

As far as my job goes, Vista was never very popular, and once Windows 7 went RTM no one wants Vista, so I kinda lucked out. Its actually funny now, if I see a system come through with Vista on it, I go and make sure someone didn't make a mistake!

LOL....awesome how you cant update Vista images with WAIK 7. They should have made them universal.

I complained about it to my MS rep, and they forwarded the request along. Hopefully an update comes out to handle it.