Windows Technical Preview and WIMBoot

[pisarz1958]

Hello everyone!

I'm using Windows 10 since they released it, as my primary OS of course (ALWAYS ON THE BLEEDING EDGE, HELL YEAH) and I noticed that I'm pretty much running out of space on my SSD drive.

 

I was using a WIM Boot setup to save some space and be able to put all the software I care about there and still have enough of space on my SSD (I know it's small, but whatever). It worked pretty well, but since I upgraded to TP, I noticed a new folder being created - RecoveryImage, on my system partition and I'm pretty much having barely 3GB of free space left after I installed the cool stuff.

 

So I'm asking, maybe it's not a right place to ask that, but...

Do you guys think that WIMBoot setup actually works in any way? (I guess it doesn't)

Are there any ideas for fixing/improving it without doing a clean install?

 

Sure, I know something is going to fail, it's a TP and stuff. I still can simply restore an image of my old wimboot config if there are issues, but I just thought I'd ask here anyway.

[TAZMINATOR]

That is the problem.

 

You shouldn't use it as primary OS.

 

You should wait until you get RTM or final version.  That way, MS can fix that problem by then.

[pisarz1958]

I thought that at least beta enthusiasts like you would actually say more than an average random person could.

[LimeMaster]

Honestly, I agree with shozilla on this one. You should have used the VHD boot feature or installed it in a VM since the OS is not meant for daily use yet!

[TAZMINATOR]

I thought that at least beta enthusiasts like you would actually say more than an average random person could.

 

Well, you had no problem with space on Windows 7/8? Right?

 

Then you have a problem with Windows 10..  which you run out of the space.

 

That's the problem.  Using OS as primary is insanely crazy and stupid, That's simple.

 

Which means you waste time installing 10 and wiping it off and installing Windows 7 or 8 whatever it worked for you before..

 

You can use 10 in the VM as Lime mentioned.  That is no problem..  so if you find out that you have space problem in 10, then delete VM out... and you are back to Normal as before. 

 

Think about that.

[TPreston]

Or you could just use Native VHD Boot which gives the best of both worlds  (Y)

[Argi]

What's the path of the file that's taking up the space?  You should report it through the Feedback tool.

[pisarz1958]

I'd say that it's harder to give some useful feedback until you actually put a beta software into any use. Playing with something for a while and using it to actually get stuff done are two opposite things, but that's just my opinion. I've been using betas/dailies of almost everything for a long time now, I never expected it to be stable and polished, but it in some way felt right for me. Yeah, it's not meant to be used this way, I'm aware of that. I'm not just someone who installed an early build and started complaining because it's unfinished.

 

Anyway, back to the topic. I don't think Windows 10 installer touched that wimboot images in any way, so not only they are taking some space, but also new recovery images and the whole Windows 10 too. Apparently they didn't thought anyone using such setup would even think about upgrading to Tech Preview. I kinda expected it to fail, so I'm not really surprised that this happened. I just hoped for some workarounds for this issue.

[LimeMaster]

I'd say that it's harder to give some useful feedback until you actually put a beta software into any use. Playing with something for a while and using it to actually get stuff done are two opposite things, but that's just my opinion. I've been using betas/dailies of almost everything for a long time now, I never expected it to be stable and polished, but it in some way felt right for me. Yeah, it's not meant to be used this way, I'm aware of that. I'm not just someone who installed an early build and started complaining because it's unfinished.

While I can see what you are saying I still think it would be better used as a secondary OS, which is were VHD boot & virtualisation solutions come into place, as they still allow you to provide feedback, report bugs & play around with the OS.

 

Anyways, those were merely suggestions & opinions, so you can take it or leave it.

[pisarz1958]

I was right, I guess if I wanted WIM Boot I would have to set it up again from scratch based on Windows 10. So I guess it's solved.

 

I downgraded back to 8.1u1 as except for this issue, I also had some weird stuff going on with power management etc.

[Noir Angel]

How much RAM do you have? If it's over 4GB you could probably get away with resizing your page file to 2GB, if you can live without fast boot you'll also save a fair chunk of space by disabling hibernation (powercfg -h off from an elevated command prompt).

 

Also, (again from elevated command prompt) using DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase will save you a fair bit of space (at the cost of no longer being unable to revert back to Windows 8.1)

[Gotenks98]

I will give you a little hint on the wimboot thing. If you have multiple USB drives that are big you can create a custom recovery drive by going to recovery in control panel. It should save your wimboot configuration to that drive in the event you need to restore it to a blank drive. To get Wimboot on Windows 10 you just create a second recovery drive. Then all you do is create an image of how you want your Windows 10 install to be by install windows in a VM or another drive. Then just run recimg /createimage c:\somedirectory . Take the custom refresh wim file and rename it to install.wim. Copy this to your second recovery drive and overwrite the install.wim in the sources folder. Now boot to the second recovery drive that now has the Windows 10 image. Now you have to boot from the recovery drive and choose to reset your pc. Once you do that the new recovery is added and you have a Windows 10 wimboot install without having to go thru all that scripting crap to setup a wimboot install.

[ShadeOfBlue]

I know you've already reinstalled, but I'll still answer for future reference:

 

Anyway, back to the topic. I don't think Windows 10 installer touched that wimboot images in any way, so not only they are taking some space, but also new recovery images and the whole Windows 10 too. Apparently they didn't thought anyone using such setup would even think about upgrading to Tech Preview. I kinda expected it to fail, so I'm not really surprised that this happened. I just hoped for some workarounds for this issue.

 

You are on the right track. In a WIMBoot configuration, most of the files on the Windows partition (e.g. "C:") are initially just pointers to the real files that are buried inside the WIM file. But, whenever any file is created/modified, it is written as a normal file. The WIM file is never modified under normal conditions. That is by design, and also by technical necessity. Neither Windows 8.1 nor Windows Technical Preview support creating a WIMBoot configuration through the graphical setup. Performing an upgrade will leave you with a standard installation of Windows (not WIMBoot).

If you chose the option to not remove user data, an upgrade from Win8.1 to Technical Preview has the following effects:

- The original WIMBoot image is deleted.

- Like with any Windows upgrade install, files from the previous Windows version are moved into the "Windows.old" folder. Because the WIM file was removed, many of these files will be unreadable but not taking up space. Many others will be from Windows updates and other things; those will still be taking up a lot of space.

- Setup files (e.g. install.wim) for the new Windows version are located in the "RecoveryImage" folder.

- Pretty much all other files are left untouched.

 

 

If your drive was able to hold all of that and still had about 3GB left over, then you may not even need WIMBoot. The main space savings from WIMBoot comes from not needing an additional image file for the system refresh/rest feature (the WIMBoot file serves double-duty as one). That matters to OEMs, but not to those who install Windows themselves and don't need to keep a recovery image on the Windows drive. Yes, the WIM file is compressed, but in my tests I only saved a little over 2GB using WIMBoot with a clean install of Windows 8.1 Update 1 (7.1GB vs. 9.3GB). That 7.1GB figure includes the WIM file (as it should).

After a successful upgrade, you may safely remove the "RecoveryImage" and/or "Windows.old" folders if you don't need them. However, the ""Windows.old" folder will be really difficult to fully remove in this situation. The easiest way is to boot to WinPE and delete it from there. Deleting all those things should free up at least 4GB of space (perhaps a lot more).

I haven't tested the following with the Tech Preview, but if you want, you should be able to capture the Tech Preview partition to a new WIMBoot-enabled install.wim file, then format the partition and apply the image back as a WIMBoot configuration.

 

Once you do that the new recovery is added and you have a Windows 10 wimboot install without having to go thru all that scripting crap to setup a wimboot install.

 

I haven't tested this, however I am dubious. The images created by recimg are not WIM bootable. Even if it skips checking for that flag and seems to work (not completely impossible, since it's a valid WIM file either way), the image will still have the wrong chunk size. A normal WIM file uses a 32KiB chunk size, while a WIM bootable one uses 4KiB chunks. This results in better performance because 4KiB also happens to be the default NTFS cluster size and the internal sector size of modern drives.