tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post1034830714168033875..comments2024-03-11T02:35:50.848-05:00Comments on grand stream dreams: WinPE and DISM/PEimg to boost Scratch Space (Ram Disk)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-8576275552137011022016-05-01T12:26:37.263-05:002016-05-01T12:26:37.263-05:00@DonPick - that is a really good page you linked t...@DonPick - that is a really good page you linked to!<br /><br />My WinPE builds (Win 7) that I did back here have still been running well enough for use to this day that I haven't gone back and explored/updated them to the latest PE 5.0.<br /><br />I really need to get going and bring them current.<br /><br />When I do I'll be sure to include your information as it seems really cool that it now auto-sizes based on system RAM available.<br /><br />That seems more flexible for all the conditions/hardware environments that one might use a PE build on.<br /><br />Awesome comment! I really appreciate you sharing it and am sorry it took me so long to respond.<br /><br />Cheers.<br /><br />--Claus V.Claushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11692921474310162470noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-67114309989005053402016-03-08T14:05:42.633-06:002016-03-08T14:05:42.633-06:00In these modern days of WinPE 5.0 (from Win8.1), s...In these modern days of WinPE 5.0 (from Win8.1), scratchspace is less of a concern?<br /><br />http://deploymentresearch.com/Research/Post/352/WinPE-5-0-scratch-space-in-MDT-2013-and-ConfigMgr-2012-R2DonPicknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-6701546153133335302011-01-27T22:23:13.299-06:002011-01-27T22:23:13.299-06:00@ Ebon - one more thing. After thinking about wha...@ Ebon - one more thing. After thinking about what you originally commented and pondering my response, I have a 2nd perspective now that may be closer to what you are askign about.<br /><br />It appears that although you can can change the "scratch-space" setting as I mentioned to provide more overhead WinPE environmental RAM room (64, 128, 256, or 512 MB level) for your applications to play in, what you are looking for is to increase the actual size of the X: drive itself...not the scratch space.<br /><br />It does appear the default 32MB size WinPE provides is "hard-coded" and independent of the "scratch-space" size. So setting that value upward doesn't appear to do anything to change the size of the X: reported.<br /><br />After some more research I did find the following post you may (or may not have) found on how to "hack" the WinPE registry (pre-building) to adjust the X: drive size.<br /><br /><a href="http://reboot.pro/9177/" rel="nofollow">ScratchSpace at 1024 (ramdisk size)</a> - Reboot Pro.<br /><br />According to this detailed info, you can (theoretically) get the X: drive to report up to 1024 MB !<br /><br />However, the posters found the effective limit at appx 470MB and anything over it unusable. When they hit the max level above, then the X: stopped being accessible.<br /><br />I'd take their advice and try the hack at a 256 MB level instead if that gives you enough room.<br /><br />I've not played with this at all in WinPE 3.0 so I can't comment on it.<br /><br />If you try it and it works...please let me know! <br /><br />Hope this helps!<br /><br />Cheers!<br /><br />--Claus V.Claushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11692921474310162470noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-72788824580019364882011-01-27T21:27:34.566-06:002011-01-27T21:27:34.566-06:00@ Ebon - continued from comment above...
What I s...@ Ebon - continued from comment above...<br /><br />What I suspect is happening is that the WinPE "internals" are hard-setting the X: drive size accordingly to match the scratch-space setting. However as you point out, I seriously doubt that all 180MB of the boot.wim actually get loaded into that memory. It probably only loads what it needs to get up and running, then can reference the conents of the boot.wim file if you need to do a "DIR" to list the contents....or if you need to call an application included, it then loads that application into the actual "scratch-space" RAM to execute. So not all of the entire contents of the boot.wim file get loaded into the X: / scratch-space all at once. What isn't needed gets called when requested.... At least that's how I understand it.<br /><br />I'm not sure why you are seeing about 3 MB scratch space / X: space. I checked one of my "stock" WinPE 3.0 builds and it reports my X: drive capacity is reporting 31.9 MB with 2.42 MB "used" with the rest "free".<br /><br />I also ran into application launching issues so that's why I typically build my custom WinPE 3.0 builds with either a 256 MB or 512 MB scratch space as I have outlined how to do with DISM above in this post. My 512 MB scratch-space work great and give me lots of application running room.<br /><br />Again, these assume you have sufficient physical system RAM on the system you are booting to support that size scratch-space. If you don't, the WinPE won't be able to load. As I mentioned, you can manually use DISM to set the scratch-space / X: level above the default to 64, 128, 256, or 512 MB levels. I am not aware of any way to make it larger than 512MB.<br /><br />If you haven't tried to do this yet using the steps above, please do so. A 512 MB custom scratch-space build made a big difference with how my "portable" applications run in WinPE over the default 32MB scratch-space size. <br /><br />I hope this helps just a bit.<br /><br />Cheers.<br /><br />--Claus V.Claushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11692921474310162470noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-17263734866398906672011-01-27T21:26:19.675-06:002011-01-27T21:26:19.675-06:00@ Ebon - I'm certainly no expert in the WinPE ...@ Ebon - I'm certainly no expert in the WinPE field, but I'll try to answer your question with the information I know.<br /><br />According to this Technet post: <a href="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc709665%28WS.10%29.aspx" rel="nofollow">Walkthrough: Create a Custom Windows PE Image</a> the following Note explains the relationship between the X: drive you see and the "scratch-space" which is also could be your RAM-drive.<br /><br />"A Windows PE RAM disk boots directly into memory and is assigned the drive letter X, which does not correspond to the media (for example, a UFD or a CD-ROM) from which you booted. Ensure that you have sufficient memory to support the size of your Windows PE image plus any additional memory requirements, for example, if you plan on running any customized applications that need additional working memory."<br /><br />See also this post where someone else was wrestling with the X: RAM drive under WinPe 2.0: <a href="http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=19592" rel="nofollow"> WinPE 2.0 booting from usb memory to ram, ram disk size increase</a><br /><br />As I shared in this particluar post, you can use the DISM utility when you build your WinPE 3.0 to adjust the size of the "scratch-space", and thus, increase the available RAM for applications to execute in; the default build size (if you don't manually adjust it) is 32 MB.<br /><br />(continued in next comment...)Claushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11692921474310162470noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-35201174770073438912011-01-26T16:34:52.357-06:002011-01-26T16:34:52.357-06:00I stumbled across your blog looking for what I tho...I stumbled across your blog looking for what I thought was a very simple question, but so far I can find no answer. How do I increase the size of X: in WinPE? I need free disk space to run apps I have added, but there is none because X: is only 3086KB. This makes no sense to me as X: can't only be 3MB as the files on it (i.e. the boot.wim) are over 180MB. Also, nothing in your or other articles on the subject of the "RAM Disk" which I assume is referring to the X: drive that is carved out of system memory, indicates that it could be anything other than 32MB which also makes no sense.<br />If you have any helpful hints on what I'm missing, why I can't find any intelligent reference to X:, and how I force there to be say 100mb of free "drive space" on X: so apps can write temp files and whatnot to actually function instead of kicking errors due to no space, I'd be most grateful :)Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00402057081178090199noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-3345883503366798892010-03-20T14:52:23.541-05:002010-03-20T14:52:23.541-05:00@ Bret - No I hadn't even thought of that. Th...@ Bret - No I hadn't even thought of that. That is brilliant in its simplicity and elegance!<br /><br />Looks like I have a new project on my hands! ;-)<br /><br />Thank you very much for sharing that tip. I'm already thinking of the fun and excitement this will bring.<br /><br />Awesome tip and thank you kindly for sharing!<br /><br />--Claus V.Claushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11692921474310162470noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-66348208901286119642010-03-20T13:38:07.369-05:002010-03-20T13:38:07.369-05:00Hi Claus,
Instead of copying and renaming your bo...Hi Claus,<br /><br />Instead of copying and renaming your boot-*.wim files, have you thought about using bcdedit to add entries to display a bootmgr menu with choices of each wim? You could keep all of the wims in your sources folder, too. I like to have a menu with a 4-second timeout to the default.<br /><br />I enjoy reading your blog because I think I do a lot of the same stuff with WinPE as you do. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experiences.Bretnoreply@blogger.com