WinSxS cleanup & BIOS/UEFI bootable ISO

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NicoWeytens

New Member
A few months ago I started creating my own custom Windows Server 2012 R2 & 2016 ISO's. To speed up in-place upgrades I'm adding all patches since the ISO's release, simply with dism because it's free and not that complicated to do.
2 issues though, why I might consider asking my boss for an NTLite license:
* The install.wim file grows a lot, from the original 4.4GB to 7.2GB after adding all patches. And running dism with a /StartComponentCleanup parameter seems to fail because of pending actions. Because the image is bigger we need more free disk space on the servers where we want to do an in-place upgrade. Not a blocking issue, but there's not always enough free space and we need to cleanup/extend the system drive before being able to continue.
* I used ImgBurn to recreate a bootable ISO, but apparently the ISO is only usable for legacy BIOS machines. Physical servers with UEFI refuse to boot with it.

So will NTLite address both my issues?
Which file size of the wim file can I expect? Only a bit smaller, or near the original size again?
Does the ISO creation feature support both BIOS/UEFI, just like the original Microsoft ISO's?
 
DISM isnt the be all and end all, it has limitations. Im sure i dont need to tell you this but some updates cant directly update the source, they are pending(you can see this with a loaded image on NTLites Update page) and dism is failing because of those pendings. Its only when the image is deployed and those pending updates are fully installed that dism can cleanup but even then its options are limited compared to NTLite.

NTLite has various options for you to clean up and help reduce the wim size. Get the latest installer Here and run it in Free/Unlicensed mode to see what options are availible to you. A lot of things are greyed out and not availible in Free mode, load an image to see what options are availible if you had a license.

You have got an Unattended page so you can configure the image during setup to suit your requirements too.

As for justifying the expense to your boss i say look at NTLite with an image loaded, see whats availible, do you thinks its worth it?

I will let Nuhi answer your sizes and UEFI questions, i just make the tea around here. :)
 
yeah, I have tried NTLite in 'free' mode earlier. It was actually my first tool of choice, because I've used nLite and vLite years ago at home, back in the days when disk space was still expensive and I was living on a student budget ;)
But I explored other, free options afterwards. Convincing management of spending a little money isn't always that easy, even for a relatively cheap €250 license.

But if NTLite would tackle both issues, it would save me and my colleagues who'll use the iso quite some time, which in term is money.
So looking forward to Nuhi's answer.
 
I have presets availible for Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 client versions. Choose the preset that is a cousin of your server versions.
With pagefile hibernation sleep and system restore disabled they tpically shrink the installation by 2GB's so you will get around 5 to 6GB installed dpending on the OS. Because they are for Client and home users you will have to modify them accordingly.
 
I don't want to customize the ISO too much, actually. My goal is only to have a Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016 ISO with all the latest updates included. I'd update the ISO a few times a year, let's say every quarter.
Perhaps I'll also add some VMware and RAID controller drivers, but that's about it.
 
Thats understandable for corporate users but there is still a decent amount you can do to reduce the wim and installed sizes.
Apart from the various cleanups you can easily remove 3rd party drivers because many of them will be out of date anyway, uneeded languages and keyboards, but of course you know this being a seasoned liter. :cool:
 
NicoWeytens said:
* I used ImgBurn to recreate a bootable ISO, but apparently the ISO is only usable for legacy BIOS machines. Physical servers with UEFI refuse to boot with it.
Click to expand...

I have a UEFI mobo and, until it occurred to me that I could save lots of time by installing my 'Lite'd Win7 via USB (Rufus), I was burning DVD's with the ISO.

It worked for me.

I use AnyBurn.
 
our company AV client says that AnyBurn contains malware...
Anyway, this little project was abruptly being halted, after my colleague discovered yesterday there's issues with IIS when using the custom ISO I created some months ago. We're likely going to check to automate our in-place upgrades with SCCM instead.
 
I don't use AV. But I use the portable version of AnyBurn (just an .exe) and Comodo doesn't complain about it.

I'll search the web to see if more.
 
It's possibly a false-positive, you know. You can upload it to VirusTotal to be sure.
I also downloaded the portable version, but it was immediately quarantined. As I don't have control over our AV clients, I can't use it on our corporate devices.
Anyway, parking this project, at least for now.
 
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