What is WIM and what does it stand for?

[aspenjim]

Title says it all... Kind of a WinPE n00b question, I know, but I'm a WinPE n00b!!!

thanks for any infos

AJ

edit... Okay I found out it means Windows Image Management and new feature of Vista that does a file based image as opposed to a sector based image that will install on different hardware. Any further explanation would be great. Thx.

Edited November 28, 2005 by aspenjim

[os2fan2]

The way Windows longhorn installs, is that it essentially unzips a huge WIM file, and post-configures it.

The actual install program is a WinPE, that lives in a WIM file. This is unzipped to the ram drive, and the ramdisk is started. it loads faster, becasue there are fewer bites at the cdrom.

Unlike the previous WinNT installs, you can configure the WIM file, by unpacking it, adding files, and repacking it. This is also how you do the WinPE thing too. I have had a shot at making a real WinPE out of the WinPE supplied. You basically add one or two files to the stock WinPE, and you get a command prompt, from which you can run setup.

[getwired]

WIM = Windows Imaging. Believe it or not, the M doesn't really stand for anything (not Management, not anything). The M is a placeholder to create a third letter, so the files would have a three letter extension. Really.

Think of WIM as an analog to Ghost/Powerquest formats of the past/present. It is file-based, as you've read, and that allows for countless advantages - namely aggressive compression, single-instancing of shared files (even across image captures), and more - Longhorn WinPE, for example was engineered to boot from within a WIM file to save space - it takes up almost no space as a result, since the majority of it's files are shared with the version of Windows it is installing. Note that the previous poster was not quite correct - WinPE stays completely compressed in the WIM, even when booting. The WIM is simply an overlay on the RAMDisk - files are never decompressed. Look for information on the Windows Automated Installation Kit and you should find some more info about WIM.

Note that the version of WIM available today (in the SMS OSD Feature Pack) is only capable of editing by extracting the image and recapturing/appending. The version of XImage (the WIM capture/apply tool) included in the WAIK is the first version which has key Longhorn functionality, mount and modify (think editing an image from Explorer or the command-prompt as easily as adding or deleting files from your own HDD).

HTH