Install.wim Download
Kristin Dampeer
I have a question, which I think should be simple but has me stumped. I am setting up a new computer (bare metal out of the box). I have installed Win 10 (21H2) on it. I ran sfc /scannow and was surprised that it had a do a few repairs in this clean install. (Looked at the CBS.log file.)
and hit Enter. Your install.esd can contain six or seven Windows 10 versions. Look at the list for the number that corresponds to the version of Windows 10 you are running. Then type (replace X with your version number)
When the export is complete, you can exit the Command Prompt. You now have install.esd and install.wim in your new folder. If you wish, you can copy your Windows 10 installation USB to another USB thumb drive, delete the install.esd file in that drive and replace it with install.wim.
Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things. We were all once "Average Users".Computer Specs
The thing to be aware of is the Windows license can interact with licenses of both Microsoft (eg Office 365) and non Microsoft (eg AVG antivirus) products so best not rely on licensed software being graceful in this restoration method.
IMO you are more likely to have a disk/machine failure than a corrupt Windows file that causes problems and is actually replaceable via DISM etc.
You could just make an image backup to an external disk and restore that if it goes pear shaped.
We pretty quickly worked out how pointless it was using optical media, the install file set and answer file being stationed in a folder on the Windows partition of a pre-partitioned UEFI drive and fired with setup using the /unattend switch. The fun was you has to make sure the boot media was out of the picture before running setup if it was writeable, or Windows setup could set its BCD store on that instead. The headache was Windows 7 (no FFU option, no DISM imaging, all imagex with manual partitioning, individual partition images, and even getting busy with bootrec and bcdedit on some of the older configurations before UEFI became a default BIOS setting as the last thing you want is a default of CMOS settings leaving the machine unable to boot the OS.)
Adding a subsequent image does NOT mean adding all the files in the next image to the archive. Dism loads the existing catalogue and determines the end of the data blocks, and then proceeds to process the new files being added (or to be removed) by the same criteria, but when building the data ONLY adding to the data blocks those where the where the name and location within the relative position in the image structure are the same, but the size, version information differs from the file already in the base image and all that information is added to the catalogue as a second image catalogue.
In restoring dism processes the first image catalogue, and then applies the changes detailed for the second image in order to make the required changes to the final compiled catalogue of files to be placed by the process in order to successfully complete restoration of the requested image from that information. It is thus of primary importance to get the images into the archive in the right order or getting the later images can become time consuming, or the archive can get unwieldy in size and access time as much sifting of catalogues and unpacking many entire blocks to extract a few files takes more time than unpacking a contiguous image from one catalogue and a smaller number of blocks.
The alternative solution is to mount the image taken as a backup (FFU images included) and simply copy the files from the mount point via command prompt (or back up a path with DISM and use that
I am running Windows 10 Pro 64bit on my PC, and have installed Windows ADK for Windows 10. When using Windows System Image Manager, and trying to load a install.wim file in it, i get the following error message:
I had tried using the DISM cmd running cmd line as admin, but was also getting "An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format". DISM log file was only marginally helpful and I decided to try 7ZIP, which seems to be working for me now.
I have Windows 10 Pro version 1903 on my workstation, so I installed ADK for version 1903, Windows PE add-on for ADK, and Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. As I checked in the Microsoft Deployment Workbench, the version is 6.3.8456.1000. I also downloaded the Windows 10 version 1903 ISO using Media Creation Tool, which is the only way I found to download the Windows 10 v1903 ISO.
The thing is, the ISO I downloaded using Windows Media Creation Tool does not contain the install.wim, but it has the file install.esd. Some old posts suggest that the ISO downloaded from TechBench does contain the install.wim but TechBench is no longer available. Media Creation Tool is the only legit source I found to download Windows 10 v1903 ISO.
You can not legally image using the Media Creation Tool. It can only be used to manually update an existing version of Windows 10 on a computer or to manually reinstall Windows 10 on a compute already licensed for that version of Windows 10.
If this is for evaluation then it is fine as the IMAGE MUST NOT be used for distribution without the correct Volume licensing in place but can be used to understand the procedures needed to do this.
By all means use the instructions I have given to start customising images etc for test purposes but NO image created using this method can be used in Production as the licenses on the existing machines are OEM and thus canot be moved/imaged for use on another machine.
However I am in environment where the images change very constantly (can be biweekly or monthly). I am authorized to deploy said images but combining them is manipulating the image which to a techie is no biggie but to the folks who sign my checks this would be a problem.
The basic flaw in within setup.exe (that is located in boot.wim) - it looks for setup.exe and install.wim specifically in SOURCES folder and there is no easy way to change this without modifying boot.wim (to get access to the setup.exe within it).
Before jumping in just want to mention I know that I can chainload a second partition using syslinux. This is more of a question on how to add chainloading of second partition/bootmgr on second partition from within first partition BOOTMGR/BCD
Suppose you'd like to have a dvd with Vista/Win7 setup files(installation disk) PLUS ERD Commander, Active Boot Disk, ESET SysRescue or any other custom made WinPE that you built, on a multiboot CD/DVD, so you could chose which one you'd like to boot.
copy the boot.wim file in sources folder of active boot disk/ ghost pe/ erdcommander 6.0 to the sources folder in disk1 in the project. and rename it to desired. i renamed it to boot32.wim you may use any...
But the problem is still the same: setup/boot.wim needs to reference the INSTALL.WIM from more than one location (or at least be dynamic). Unfortunately its hard coded to look for the install.wim in the sources folder and thats it. There is several work around (one of them is yours, another one is combining the install.wims into one big install.wim) but they dont address the root problem.
I have something like this working, or at least very close. I have Windows 7, 8.1, and 10 in x64 and x86, as well as MS-Dart 6.5, a hand-modified Falcon4 UBCD, and AOMEI's PE Builder 1.5 booting from a single 32 gb flash drive. The "at least, very close" part, is that 7 & 8.1 installers use a generic winpe.wim in place of boot.wim. By default, this drops me into a command prompt. I haven't tested this next part yet, but if I did it correctly, I believe I've integrated an automatic installer for drivers from driverpacks.net and a multi-oem customizer tool. Note that I did not write or create any of these separate tools - I am only integrating them together.
Back to the topic at hand, and as I was saying, 7 and 8.1 installers drop me to a command prompt inside the RAM disk for winpe.wim. From there, I am able to change drive and directory and run the correct setup.exe for the system at hand.
I am currently learning windows 10 deploy. I have Microsoft Deployment toolkit update 2013 update 1 installed. When I try to import operating system, system tell me can not find install.wim in windows sources. I did some research found out that current windows 10 home/pro installation media comes with install.esd instead install.wim. Is there anyone know to to extract install.wim from install.esd. I have looked at few ways online, none of them working.
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