Captured .wim using imagex - 8GB in size?

[jbusby]

Hi,

I am looking for some assistance please with regards to the size of my .wim file created using imagex.

I have today build a new image for my company's hardware and captured the image using imagex and saved it onto the c:\ drive of the machine I captured.

After sysprep'ing my machine, I booted into the Winpe enviroment and ran the cmd "imagex /capture d:\ d:\install.wim "New image"" which would save the install.wim file onto the d:\ drive. (d:\ is the hdd, c:\ was the system reserve)

This took around 30 mins to successfully complete and when booting up the machine again and logging on etc, I checked the wim file had been created on the root of c:\ and found it be around 8GB in size.

My plan was to capture the install.wim and replace the install.wim file on my bootable windows 7 usb stick. However as this is over 8GB it will not fit on my 4GB usb stick.

My question is a) have I captured this correctly and expect this to be the normal size and b) if so, can this file be reduced in size able to fit on my win 7 usb stick, therefore making it easier to image new computers.

thanks in advance.

regards,
James

 

[pparks1]

The only thing I could think of trying, would be to apply maximum compression with imagex...but it's HIGHLY unlikely to shrink it that much.

imagex /compress maximum /capture d:\ d:\install.wim "New image"

Your file size is proabably right. Windows 7 by itself will take over 3GB in a WIM file. If you add a handful of applications and such, it will be larger. The one that I use at my company is around 6GB in size.

 

[jbusby]

Thanks for the reply.

So I guess the answer is to buy a 16gb USB drive or find an alternative method of deployment (wds)?!

 

[pparks1]

^ yes, probably. 16GB keys are very cheap these days, around $12 at NewEgg
Newegg.com - Patriot Flex 16GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive Model PSF16GFXUSB

 

[giantpiff]

now what?

i have a 32gb stick, im in the same boat you are. everytime I burn the windows 7 ultimate x64 iso to usb it formats it as FAT32, so i can't copy the 9gb install.wim file to the USB stick and overwrite the original install.wim

How can I format the usb bootable windows 7 ultimate x64 install USB to ntfs and install with my custom install.wim file?

ive also tried an imagex /split and split the install.wim file to 3 install.srm files, but now what? im stuck, someone please help!

 

[VistaKing]

Giantpiff,

Format your USB using Diskpart

Use Format fs=NTFS quick . It will make the USB NTFS .

To create a bootable USB Flash drive here are the commands . Inside Command Prompt

diskpart
list disk
select disk # ( usually its 1 , Cause your internal hard drive is 0 )
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=ntfs quick
assign
exit

Then You want to replace your captured install.wim file with the original .wim file

 

[hulkbuster]

Hello, this thread looks quite old, and i too want some assistance in this field, i m on dual boot, and i want to capture my Win7 Pro partition using imagex.
First what i did was,




So i want to know is , is it entirely necessary to sysprep the win7 partition before creating an image .
I noticed after capturing an image followed by sysprep then using imagex to capture from Winpe, the system would perform some settings update and devices and services needed to load win7 and would also ask for another user account to be created, what purpose would that serve.

Can i straight away use the: imagex /capture d: e:\win7.wim "win7" to capture the image directly.

Any solution welcomed.

 

[eashwaran21]

I'm afraid i need some help as well, since no one advised on my query...
My issue is not with the .wim file but with the local policy
The structure of the captured images is as below

2 profiles (1 admin and 1 user)
"User" is restricted from performing many action such as usb access and so on

After having it deployed, the hardening is no longer effective
How can i capture with the local policy still intact?
Please advice