Split Appended Wims across CDS anyone?

[p4ntb0y]

Hi,

Has any one been able to split a wim that has appended images onto cds?

I have tried splitting wims follow the m$ guide with no success at the moment.

If anyone has split an appended wim let me know.

I would like to use geezery HTA gui booting into winpe 2 using the cd method and then run the split wim across two cds.

[geezery]

The split feature of ImageX is as follows:

imagex /split c:\c_drive.wim 650 Once a WIM file is split, it cannot be reassembled, nor can it be mounted and modified. Because of this you should retain a copy of the entire, original single WIM file to work with and perform modifications, then split only a working copy of your completed image--into either or both CDs and DVDs. After the split you will then "burn" each of the fragments to individual media.

When you apply a split image, ImageX will recognize that you have split the image and prompt you for the additional media accordingly. There is no need to split an image stored on, or to be distributed from, a network location.

PC Deployment With ImageX

I think you have already tried that, but I put it here anyway.

You first have to build a wim file and then split it in to 650mb pieces and burn to cd's.

[p4ntb0y]

I actually have split my wim into smaller chunks to cater for the winpe on the cd about 100mb so its in 250mb chunks. But I still have not got this working.

mmm looking at this "After the split you will then "burn" each of the fragments to individual media.

" it would suggest that you can only place one swn file on cd"

My idea you see is to have your nice hta start up pn my winpe 2 cd and the engineer select the image he requires.

All my images then can be on a two cd set. looks like some more testing to do.

I do not have the option of network install as i have 600+ sites and 10mb hubs at most of them and then i got the third party support replaceing boxes I wanted to make it a simple as possiable as in just click on the image they require.

Edited May 14, 2007 by p4ntb0y

[p4ntb0y]

Ok started testing my images.wim is 986mb anw when i split it into chunks of 150 the 7 parts add up to 983mb maybe this is just meta data info but 3mb worth?

tried a different size split into 500mb chunks two swm files total of 983mb again 3mb difference strange.

going to try and burn a winpe disc with no HTA and load the swm file manually I will try both sizes.

[zorphnog]

I have not tried to split an appended image, but the problem you are going to run into if you get that to work is applying images spanned over multiple discs. The problem is that imagex will not prompt you for the next image files on a different disc. I have been looking for a solution for this for a while and I have concluded that imagex just cannot do it. Just some food for thought before you get too in depth.

Edited May 16, 2007 by zorphnog

[p4ntb0y]

Ok did a test today and it failed.

doing some research I saw this by the makers of "son of cab" wim ...

Support Media (Disc) Spanning Even in the early days of WIM, when we could fit an image on a single CD, we knew that we had to support multiple pieces of media. Even if we shipped Windows on one CD, once users added applications, service packs, and so on, their images would likely grow beyond the size of a single CD or DVD. So we had to let them span across multiple pieces of media for their own installation and recovery solutions.

so it must work.

I will investigate more and post back here

[p4ntb0y]

update you can span wim files accross cd the script is included in th WAIK in a folder called samples named createspannedshares.cmd

I have not read thru the script yet as I need my glasses and a gang of losers decided to beat me up and nick my specs!

but it looks hopefull so with geezery HTA it run sweet.

If anyone gets chance to look at the batch file that be great.

I knew I should of never of left my beloved computer and actually go out to meet people.

[zorphnog]

I too have looked at the createspannedshares.cmd. It is intended to be used with the vista installation disk. So if you want to split the installation DVD into CDs you can. All the script does is make some calls to "imagex /split" and oscdimg. However, Vista installation image applying is controlled by a wizard application that applies the image through API calls not imagex. Therefore, they can prompt you to insert disks during the apply process. Imagex does not prompt you for the next span of your image, it simply quits applying the image and displays an error.

Edited May 18, 2007 by zorphnog

[paper]

huh interesting. i was looking for info in burning split images on a DVD and couldn't find much. i was trying to create a bootable dvd of a captured image and my WIM file was a bit over 5 GB.. only info I was able to find was how to put a WinPE onto a CD.

The only possibly related info I could find was

http://wmug.co.uk/blogs/larus/default.aspx

But I got stuck on the last part. I followed everything but it ended up creating 1 big ISO that was over 5.7 GB instead of 2 separate ISOs.

I wasn't sure what to do afterwards since I assume splitting up an ISO is not the way to go.

Has anyone had any luck with createspannedshares.cmd?

[p4ntb0y]

I am a bit bogge down with work at the moment but rest assured I will not stop untill I hav completed this task I have ideas of using Geezys HTA script.

I am also looking into assign a drive letter to a usb stick that never changes, thats going to be fun.

everything is possiable its just time and effort.

[geezery]

I think you can write a vbscript for your problem, if the applying continues automaticly after the cd change. There is a possibility to read the stdout and when it idles you can prompt user to put next cd inside. But I don't actually know how the applying of splitted wim works.

Edited May 29, 2007 by geezery

[p4ntb0y]

thats the problem it does not idle it goes thru the whole process till it hits 100% for the cd even tho that it only has one Install.swn

[rvonder]

update you can span wim files accross cd the script is included in th WAIK in a folder called samples named createspannedshares.cmd

I have not read thru the script yet as I need my glasses and a gang of losers decided to beat me up and nick my specs!

but it looks hopefull so with geezery HTA it run sweet.

If anyone gets chance to look at the batch file that be great.

I knew I should of never of left my beloved computer and actually go out to meet people.

Just FYI, I just used 'createspannedshares' (it's in the 'samples' subdirectory of Windows AIK) to split a Vista Ultimate DVD into a set of CDs to allow installation on an older machine that has only a CD drive. Worked perfectly by following the directions at this MS Technet page.

The instructions talk about the need to first copy all the files from the DVD to disk, and then remove the read-only attributes. But I forgot to do the latter, and it still worked with no problem - which leads me to think you could actually just point at the actual DVD drive as your 'source' without the need to do all the copying?

Be sure to make the first CD in the set bootable per the instructions; for the rest just use OSCDIMG without the "-b" option. Also, I just used the script's default max CD size of 640mb. If you're using 700mb CDs, I'd suggest changing that (instructions are commented within the script but are kinda confusing), as I ended up with 5 CDs with the last one being only about 60k. I suspect that increasing the CD max size option from 640 to 700 would have reduced that to a clean 4 CD set.

When you boot the first CD and start the install, it will prompt you to change the CDs as needed - and even has a nice suggestion that you'll need to stay by your PC to do the changes. After going through all five, it then asked for CD #1 again to complete the installation. Perfect.

[zorphnog]

I too have looked at the createspannedshares.cmd. It is intended to be used with the vista installation disk. So if you want to split the installation DVD into CDs you can. All the script does is make some calls to "imagex /split" and oscdimg. However, Vista installation image applying is controlled by a wizard application that applies the image through API calls not imagex. Therefore, they can prompt you to insert disks during the apply process. Imagex does not prompt you for the next span of your image, it simply quits applying the image and displays an error.

I repeat. The problem is not splitting the image into cd size files. The problem is applying the image once it is split on to multi-disc media. If you look through createspannedshares.cmd all it does is split the file into the specified size of your media and create iso's. It doesn't do anything towards applying the split image, this is all handled by the vista installation wizard application. If we could somehow hack out the image applying application that the vista installation uses we may be able to apply images that are spanned across media. createspannedshares.cmd is a dead end.

[kickenchicken57]

when using the WIMGAPI to apply a split WIM file, you will get an error when it reaches a file that it cannot find in the file. In the callback method you get a WIM_MSG_INFO message before the error. I have been able to wait for this info and then call cin.get() to wait on the user to switch CD's than call WIMSetReferenceFile to set the reference to my next split WIM file on the next CD. Then when the WIM_MSG_ERROR case gets fired I return WIM_MSG_SKIP_ERROR and my program continues to extract the rest of the resources in the new WIM file. The only problem with that is when I return WIM_MSG_SKIP_ERROR the file that it gave me the error on does not get extracted. What I need is some way to force the WIMApplyImage function to retry a file after I set the reference to the new WIM file on the next CD.

Any Ideas?

EDIT: Here is another Idea. I was able to pause and wait for the next CD with no errors by pausing in the WIM_MSG_PROCESS case of the callback function. I found out how many files where in the first split WIM file by counting what had extracted before the error happened. By pausing after X amount of files in the WIM_MSG_PROCESS case, I was able to call WIMSetReferenceFile with the next WIM file and continue with no problmes. The only problem with this method is there currently no way to tell how many files are in a split WIM file. If you pass any part of a split WIM file to the WIMGetImageInformation function, It will only return the number of files in the WIM as a whole. The only semi-useful info that is returned is how many parts the WIM is split into, and what part number for the wim file you currently have open

What I need to complete this is some more info on the WIMGAPI.

1) How to retry extracting a file after an error

OR.....

2) How to tell how many files are in a split WIM file.

With either one of those pieces of information, I should be able to finish a commandline tool to apply split wim files from across spanned CD's

Edited June 11, 2007 by kickenchicken57