Maximum file size of boot.wim

[karlarulaid]

Hi,

What's the maximum filesize of the boot.wim file?

Is it limited by the FAT32 4GB file size limit ?

I'm having trouble booting when boot.wim is too large.

[NiKiZe]

You are opening an issue, what exactly are the issue you are having? You don't have an error message?

What is the details needed to reproduce? Exact errors, Exact filesize, exact hardware spec, and how it is booted, including any relevant parts of iPXE scripts.

There is no specific limit, but it does depend on memory maps etc

[mcb30]

Hi,

What's the maximum filesize of the boot.wim file?

Is it limited by the FAT32 4GB file size limit ?

I'm having trouble booting when boot.wim is too large.

wimboot synthesizes a FAT filesystem, so you will not be able to use a .wim file that would be too big to represent in a FAT filesystem. (Specifically, wimboot synthesizes a 2TB disk with each individual file able to occupy up to 4GB.)

However, you may hit a limit substantially sooner than this, particularly if you are using legacy BIOS (where all files will have to have been loaded into the low 32-bit address space before wimboot is invoked).

Closing since this is not an issue in wimboot: please feel free to continue as a discussion, or to report the actual problem in wimboot (if one exists).

[karl500]

Hi,
What's the maximum filesize of the boot.wim file?
Is it limited by the FAT32 4GB file size limit ?
I'm having trouble booting when boot.wim is too large.

wimboot synthesizes a FAT filesystem, so you will not be able to use a .wim file that would be too big to represent in a FAT filesystem. (Specifically, wimboot synthesizes a 2TB disk with each individual file able to occupy up to 4GB.)

However, you may hit a limit substantially sooner than this, particularly if you are using legacy BIOS (where all files will have to have been loaded into the low 32-bit address space before wimboot is invoked).

Closing since this is not an issue in wimboot: please feel free to continue as a discussion, or to report the actual problem in wimboot (if one exists).

There is no actual issue with wimboot, but my problem is that I would like to increase the size of the boot.wim file over the 4GB limit ( I'm using UEFI x64 so not hitting the limit sooner). Are there any way to change the filesystem that the wimboot synthesizes ? Also are there options for somehow to split the boot.wim up or something like this ?

[mcb30]

There's no way to change the filesystem type: synthesizing NTFS would require a complete reimplementation of the virtual disk layer.

I'm not sure if there's a way to split up the .wim file, but if you can find a way that works on a physical FAT32 disk (e.g. a USB key) then it should also work in wimboot.

[NiKiZe]

You can split .wim files to several files, see #48, but they are not bootable.

Try to split your system to have one part for the actuall OS as boot.wim, put other files, such as programs in a separate disk.

Any chance you could go into more details on what your >4GB wim would hold?

[karl500]

You can split .wim files to several files, see #48, but they are not bootable.

Try to split your system to have one part for the actuall OS as boot.wim, put other files, such as programs in a separate disk.

Any chance you could go into more details on what your >4GB wim would hold?

For the most part it will hold drivers for different laptops. The problem is that I have about 3 laptops worth of drivers in the image and I'm already reaching the limit on this.
Without the drivers the image is about 1,5GB.
I also tried to install drivers after boot but the main problem is the video drivers which require restart and are the largest.
If you guys have any ideas how I can achieve housing more drivers on the image that would help alot.

[mcb30]

For the most part it will hold drivers for different laptops. The problem is that I have about 3 laptops worth of drivers in the image and I'm already reaching the limit on this. Without the drivers the image is about 1,5GB. I also tried to install drivers after boot but the main problem is the video drivers which require restart and are the largest. If you guys have any ideas how I can achieve housing more drivers on the image that would help alot.

It's unlikely that you actually need ~1GB of boot drivers per laptop model. Try including in boot.wim only the drivers that you need at boot time (such as storage and network drivers), and place the remainder in the install.wim image that gets downloaded from within WinPE.

[NiKiZe]

If you boot over network, don't include storage, and vice verse. I have had several blue screens due to conflicting drivers, also see https://github.com/NiKiZe/wimboot-install/blob/main/win10.ipxe and related files for how to inject files during boot, any other drivers is loaded over network, eighter by autounattend (for storage) or later stages of windows install.

[karl500]

For the most part it will hold drivers for different laptops. The problem is that I have about 3 laptops worth of drivers in the image and I'm already reaching the limit on this. Without the drivers the image is about 1,5GB. I also tried to install drivers after boot but the main problem is the video drivers which require restart and are the largest. If you guys have any ideas how I can achieve housing more drivers on the image that would help alot.

It's unlikely that you actually need ~1GB of boot drivers per laptop model. Try including in boot.wim only the drivers that you need at boot time (such as storage and network drivers), and place the remainder in the install.wim image that gets downloaded from within WinPE.

If you boot over network, don't include storage, and vice verse. I have had several blue screens due to conflicting drivers, also see https://github.com/NiKiZe/wimboot-install/blob/main/win10.ipxe and related files for how to inject files during boot, any other drivers is loaded over network, eighter by autounattend (for storage) or later stages of windows install.

I think you have misunderstood a little. I'm not using winPE to install windows. I'm using it as an operating system to use the computer with. So there is no install.wim or anything like this. And if I install some drivers after boot then windows requires restart for them to take effect and I'm back to square one.

[NiKiZe]

No driver worth the name requires a restart, the process is still the same, download and load the drivers at runtime, note that you should load them into driver store, not run some buggy installer written by lazy developers that don't know how the windows driver system work.

[karl500]

No driver worth the name requires a restart, the process is still the same, download and load the drivers at runtime, note that you should load them into driver store, not run some buggy installer written by lazy developers that don't know how the windows driver system work.

I agree that this restarting thing after driver install is quite BS.
Can you provide some sort of example or something like this on how to load the drivers at runtime to the driver store ?