[wds] How big is your boot image?

[Tricky_Dicky]

I'm just working through MDT and WDS to deploy Windows 7 and noticed that the boot image is 854Mb for the x86 and 1042Mb for x64. Is this correct as it seems massive to me?

 

Thanks

Rich

[Chris-W-]

They're tiny! Our base images are 2.4GB for x86 and 2.7GB for x64!

 

EDIT: Just realised what you meant by 'boot image'. Ours are 180mb and 250mb for x86 and x64 respectively

[Tricky_Dicky]

Is that your install image or the boot image though?

[sparkeh]

Our boot image is 160MB.

[Tricky_Dicky]

That's more like what I was expecting. Have you compressed that?

 

Any ideas what I've done wrong to make it so big?

[Chris-W-]

That's more like what I was expecting. Have you compressed that?

 

Not massively compressed no, just basic file compression.

[jamesfed]

If you have a load of drivers in the image it will quickly chew through space (expecily if there are unneeded ones in there like video drives ect)

[Tricky_Dicky]

Ok this is weird. When I create the boot file from within MDT is outputs it to C:\DeploymentShare\Boot and in there the wim file is 168Mb, however when I import it into WDS it grows to 1024Mb.

 

Any ideas what's going on?

[bossman]

Ours is 136Mb for the base build with all our drivers injected.

[Tricky_Dicky]

Ours is 136Mb for the base build with all our drivers injected.

 

Is that the size it says within WDS boot images?

[bossman]

@Tricky_Dicky:

 

Yeah sure is

[Tricky_Dicky]

@Tricky_Dicky:

 

Yeah sure is

 

That's irritating... When you created the boot image, did you do the following:

Setup MDT; import an OS, import Drivers, create a task sequence, update deployment share

Setup WDS; import a boot image and point it at the deploymentshare one create above?

 

Thanks for the help

 

Rich

[pritchardavid]

Thats size is its extracted size which happens when the boot image gets loaded on the computer I believe, same for the install image

[Tricky_Dicky]

Seems strange though that mine is showing up at 800+Mb where as BoosMan is at 168.

 

Also doesn't help that mine will now not boot! Not sure what I've changed but I'm pulling my hair out.

[Tricky_Dicky]

Just wondering, does anyone have an idea as to why when the client starts to PXEboot it gets to TFTP Download: boot\x64\pxeboot.n12 and just keeps repeating that message over and over until it eventually times out and fails?

[ChrisH]

Mine are 700-800 meg from MDT. I do have some drivers injected but not many!

[Arthur]

I use this method...

 

Finding and adding only the correct device driver to the Boot image - CoreTech Blog

 

It seems to me, people tend to add way to many drivers to their boot images, which in some cases make WinPE unstable, and subsequent make the deployment fail. It also makes it near impossible to figure out which driver versions/types are actually included, as that info is kind of limited from within the Boot Image node itself...

 

What I do, is find the exact drivers needed for my WinPE environment to work on the specific model(s), and add only those drivers. If I can boot WinPE and gain access to the network (IPCONFIG) and hard disk (DISKPART – list disk), I do not update my boot image, even if I choose to add a new NIC to the deployed OS itself!

[aerospacemango]

Right then.....

 

Just looking at my WDS server and the Boot Images are coming in at around 840meg....

 

The Install Images are between 10-15GB....These are our deployment images, with everything that, either, students or staff need.

 

They are BIG, but our system generally pulls them down in about 20 mins. And, these are ALL W7 images.

[Sam_Brown]

Boot image here is 870meg.

 

Think I just took it straight from the Windows 7 install disk.