Cannot boot WIM file

[Eagle710]

I am trying to boot a 330MB WIM file on an HP Elitebook. It seems that when I boot this WIM file on any other laptop it works. Is there anything that could be preventing this WIM from loading from within BIOS?

[Tripredacus]

By cannot boot, do you get an error? What is the model number of the notebook? Also do you have at least 512MB RAM on it?

[Eagle710]

By cannot boot, do you get an error? What is the model number of the notebook? Also do you have at least 512MB RAM on it?

Tripredacus,

It gives me the "Windows is loading files" bar which fills in all the way. But then it stops and doesnt load. I leave it fow 10 minutes and it nevers loads up. There is 2GB of RAM with a scratchspace set to 512. The model is HP 6930p.

Thanks,

Brian

[Tripredacus]

Those specs definately seem good enough for it. How are you booting to it? Using CD or USB or even Network?

How about trying to boot a stock PE, one without any additional items?

[Eagle710]

I have tried USB.... CD i havent tried yet but can if need be. With a clean version "nothing added" it boots fine.

[Jazkal]

what do you mean by scratchspace?

I know that a base wim (150 mb) takes around 385 mb of ram to boot correctly. So a 300 mb wim would need 800 mb or so. If the scratchspace limits that to 512mb, that would be the problem.

[Tripredacus]

what do you mean by scratchspace?

I know that a base wim (150 mb) takes around 385 mb of ram to boot correctly. So a 300 mb wim would need 800 mb or so. If the scratchspace limits that to 512mb, that would be the problem.

Good point. I forgot to consider the RAM Drive as well. How much memory is needed to create and maintain the RAM Drive? It has to be more than the amount of space you allocate for it. I could definately see the resources of this going over 2GB.

In fact, in recent testing, I tried to get an 800MB WinPE (I made it that size on accident) to boot on a PC with 4GB RAM and it also failed in this way. So perhaps there is some other limitation the PE has?

[Eagle710]

But the same exact WIM file will boot on another system that has only 2GB of RAM as well.

[Tripredacus]

But the same exact WIM file will boot on another system that has only 2GB of RAM as well.

That is not surprising. I have encountered systems that refuse to boot WinPE as well, but they seem to be more motherboard limitations. By that I mean the machines I could not get it to work on, that particular motherboard, has not worked on ANY machines with that board, ever. In those cases (for me) I am then forced to use an alternate method such as Ghost or PING, which we keep around just for those instances where WinPE doesn't work in one way or another. But it is interesting that a stock PE worked and not the modified one... For me, that scenario has never happened.

Although, I have encountered situations where a motherboard handles memory different than others. This also came up in the past when a customer tried to use a Thin Client OS on a particular motherboard. I forget which board it was... some EOL Intel board. For some reason it always tried to write the RAMDISK on the hard drive instead of memory IF a hard drive was present in the system. There wasn't many options to set in the BIOS, but I can only think of these even if they don't really make any sense:

1. Try booting to the PE without the Hard Drive hooked up.

2. Make sure ACPI is enabled in BIOS and Suspend State is set to S3.

3. Try a different PE version?

In the end, your option for this particular machine might be to work around the issue the best you can.

[Eagle710]

Do you think that updating the BIOS will make a difference? Perhaps chaning something?

[cluberti]

I hate to pile on, but I have to state that I too have had many an HP laptop (laptops in particular) that just wouldn't load a WIM file as a PE image larger than about 267 - 270MB, due to some sort of BIOS-induced memory constraints (these systems all had 2-4GB of RAM). For reference, the x64 Windows 7 boot.wim file is 163MB (approximately), so what is on this PE image that ballooned it to double that size? If you're targeting HP machines, you really do have the good possibility that you just can't have a WIM file larger than 267MB or so.