tried converting it back again, but ended up just as big as it was in the first place unfortuantely.
seems a reasonable plan. I often replace the standard winre with my own much bigger and more capable version.
@ECHO OFF
rem set variables
set pedrive=P:
set pewimpath=\win11-iso\boot.wim
set mydescription=whatevername
set sdipath=\win11-iso\boot.sdi
set wloader=winload.efi
set LCAL=en-US
rem create device option
echo.
for /f "tokens=2 delims={}" %%g in ('BCDEDIT /create /device') do set newramdiskguid=%%g
echo.
echo new ramdisk guid is %newramdiskguid%
echo.
bcdedit.exe /set {%newramdiskguid%} ramdisksdidevice partition=%PEDRIVE%
bcdedit.exe /set {%newramdiskguid%} ramdisksdipath %SDIPATH%
bcdedit.exe /set {%newramdiskguid%} description "%mydescription%"
echo.
rem create loader
for /f "tokens=2 delims={}" %%g in ('BCDEDIT /create /application osloader') do set newloaderguid=%%g
echo.
echo new loader guid is %newloaderguid%
echo.
bcdedit.exe /set {%newloaderguid%} path \Windows\system32\%WLOADER%
bcdedit.exe /set {%newloaderguid%} locale %LCAL%
bcdedit.exe /set {%newloaderguid%} systemroot \Windows
bcdedit.exe /set {%newloaderguid%} detecthal Yes
bcdedit.exe /set {%newloaderguid%} winpe Yes
bcdedit.exe /set {%newloaderguid%} osdevice ramdisk=[%PEDRIVE%]%PEWIMPATH%,{%newramdiskguid%}
bcdedit.exe /set {%newloaderguid%} device ramdisk=[%PEDRIVE%]%PEWIMPATH%,{%newramdiskguid%}
bcdedit.exe /set {%newloaderguid%} description "%mydescription%"
bcdedit.exe /displayorder {%newloaderguid%} /addlast
echo done
pause
What have you removed ?
Yes I thought so too, which is not something we would need (or could use anyway) as we have custom images deployed to all our machines
A lot of the computers only have 128gb SSD drives so space at a premium, and even on the ones with 256/512gb SSD drives it wasn't always letting me shrink the windows partition even though plenty of free space - kept getting "The specified shrink size is too big and will cause the volume to be smaller than the minimum volume size." error, even on computers where C: / windows partition had 150Gb free space and I was only trying to shrink it by 500mb!
My final WIM after the changes I made above was 418mb
Ahh, ok. That makes sense. Wow, what a pain in the backside.
Agreed, the whole thing has been a complete pain - typcial Microsoft!
I've just always assumed I could ditch it. I'm going to try it on a VM.
yes, but I included a lot of fancy stuff like explorer.
Be interesting to know your results - make sure you also test bitlocker with preboot authentication and then also pressing esc and testing supplying recovery key as that is perhaps point it might need / use the recovery partition maybe?
cool, can I ask how - is this a winbuilder / pebakery type customization or something else?
same sort of idea, I usually make my own pe which is a bit laborious. The end result is probably not massively different from using a builder
