Clean install with WIMBoot & delete recovery partition

NavyLCDR · 28 Feb 2016

Keep in mind - from the OP:

larrens said:

I bought a 2nd hand Lenovo Idea pad 100s netbook. It has 32gb eMMC storage. It has WIMBoot.

It came with Win10 but has the old owners profile so I want to reinstall a clean copy of windows 10 from usb that I downloaded from Microsoft.

DavidY · 28 Feb 2016

NavyLCDR said:

Keep in mind - from the OP:

Thanks for that - I'd not spotted that the OP mentioned the PC was using WIMBoot with Windows 10.

It's deprecated and seemingly not supported in Windows 10, but I guess some OEMs may have deployed it in the early days. I've edited my earlier post accordingly.

It may be interesting to check if the OP's device actually is using WIMBoot:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/.../dn631790.aspx
The easiest way is using Disk Management - for instance we can see from your earlier disk management screenshot that clean installing Win10 doesn't result in a WIMBoot installation, as I'd expect because it's using the newer way to compress the OS.

Kyhi · 28 Feb 2016

So, what have you figured out here..

Wimboot OS and compressed OS = are not the same thing...

Wimboot is 8.1 feature and compressed is 10 feature..

So, back to the OP's two questions - and your replies are ??

cereberus · 28 Feb 2016

DavidY said:

Thanks for that - I'd not spotted that the OP mentioned the PC was using WIMBoot with Windows 10.

It's deprecated and seemingly not supported in Windows 10, but I guess some OEMs may have deployed it in the early days. I've edited my earlier post accordingly.

It may be interesting to check if the OP's device actually is using WIMBoot:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/.../dn631790.aspx
The easiest way is using Disk Management - for instance we can see from your earlier disk management screenshot that clean installing Win10 doesn't result in a WIMBoot installation, as I'd expect because it's using the newer way to compress the OS.

Windows 10 has never used wimboot and no oem has never used it as far as I know. Some enthusiatst may have created a customised version, but oems would not have done so as the RTM release version with compactOS was designed for tablets.

OP is confusing a compressed OS with wimboot.

In compressed mode, Windows 10 simply uses shortcuts (like placeholders) for OS files, and extracts them from the winsnsx folder and decompresses them on the fly, rather than having all the decompressed files on the drive, saving several GBs of space.

Wimboot was similar, but used a compressed copy of the OS in an external partition (doubling up as a recovery partition) , but still had the winsnsx folders (ie 2 copies of OS in effect). This is main reason why W10 is smaller than W8.1.

It is clear from OP post, previous owner must have (most likely) upgraded from 8.1 leaving wimboot partitition in place.

It is possible though that the oem decided to put an oem recovery partition on it (including special drivers and maybe even some bloatware), and OP is interpreting the recovery partition as a wimboot partition.

So long as OP exports all drivers first and makes an image backup, it will be ok to wipe this partition, and clean install.

Kyhi · 28 Feb 2016

To solve any mystery -

one could assign a drive letter to the recovery partition using diskpart.
then use dism to get the info from and about the recovery install.wim

larrens · 28 Feb 2016

All

Thanks for the comprehensive replies. I think that the original configuration of this computer had Win8.1 installed, and the WIMBoot warning in the user guide possibly refers to that?
I am not sure how to tell if WIMBoot is still applicable - see Disk Management attached.

Since then the Windows 10 free upgrade was installed, some time ago perhaps.
I say this because under the recovery section, I don't see an option to roll back to Win8.1 so its past the 30 days.
(all I have is "reset this PC" & "Advanced startup").

So it looks like Win10 is well embedded an I wont be able to create a Win8.1 image.

My disk management screenshot is attached.
You can see the 1gb recovery partition.

So, on this basis, do you think that:

if I backup the drivers
take an image of the current Win10 configuration,
do a clean Win10 installation of USB
and delete all recovery partitions I should be ok?

Or does Win10 needs this for the compression to save space?

larrens · 28 Feb 2016

Yes, I checked disk management and C: has Wim Boot under the status (sorry, I chopped that part of the screenshot in my image in my last post)

DavidY said:

Thanks for that - I'd not spotted that the OP mentioned the PC was using WIMBoot with Windows 10.

It's deprecated and seemingly not supported in Windows 10, but I guess some OEMs may have deployed it in the early days. I've edited my earlier post accordingly.

It may be interesting to check if the OP's device actually is using WIMBoot:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/.../dn631790.aspx
The easiest way is using Disk Management - for instance we can see from your earlier disk management screenshot that clean installing Win10 doesn't result in a WIMBoot installation, as I'd expect because it's using the newer way to compress the OS.

cereberus · 28 Feb 2016

After all this discussion, there is no wimboot recovery partition here!

The recovery partition here is the standard W10 recovery partition used if you want to reset your pc.

I recommend you leave it alone.

You do not need to reinstall Windows to delete old user profile. Just create a new admin account, remove old one, and delete old files.

Kyhi · 28 Feb 2016

You have the Recovery Partition 1000MB - so not a wimboot PC

cereberus said:

After all this discussion, there is no wimboot recovery partition here!

The recovery partition here is the standard W10 recovery partition used if you want to reset your pc.

I recommend you leave it alone.

You do not need to reinstall Windows to delete old user profile. Just create a new admin account, remove old one, and delete old files.

Answered and Solved..

DavidY · 28 Feb 2016

larrens said:

Yes, I checked disk management and C: has Wim Boot under the status (sorry, I chopped that part of the screenshot in my image in my last post)

It's curious that the Disk Management says WIMBoot when (as the others pointed out) there isn't a partition big enough.
What happens if you run the other command from the Technet link?

Method 2: From the Command line

From the Windows desktop, right-click the Start button and select Command prompt (Admin).

Type this command:

Code:

fsutil wim enumwims c:

If the output looks like this, the PC is configured to start from a WIM file:

Code:

0 {32E66EF3-3CE0-4A04-8F17-25B2929407D1} 00000001 \\?\Volume{8f4fbaed-dc86-4f7d-803d-55611b59fe39}\windows images\install.wim:1

If the output looks like this, the PC is not configured to start from a WIM file:

Code:

WofEnumEntries failed:
Error:  Incorrect function