See Full Details about a Windows 10 ISO file or USB  

Thank you Brink. I should have said I was lazy about it and copypasta'd this:

Code:

dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:D:\sources\install.esd /index:1
dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:D:\sources\install.esd /index:1
dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:D:\sources\install.wim /index:1
dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:D:\sources\install.wim /index:1
dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:D:\sources\boot.esd /index:1
dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:D:\sources\boot.esd /index:1
dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:D:\sources\boot.wim /index:1
dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:D:\sources\boot.wim /index:1

Nevermind that it smiley'd my D : s and that the first revision had the breaks cut out by the forum. A comment said boot worked, which didn't make sense to me. It didn't hurt to try. No joy. My drive letter is 'D' and I am technically literate. Any ideas?

Edit: Nope I am mental it's in the E drive Happy New Years.

Beat you to the punch, see above

Hi everyone. First post but I've found some very useful tidbits here while lurking over the past year or so. Thanks to you all for the amazing content.

I recently downloaded the MSDN ISO's for 1903 and yesterday downloaded the MediaCreationTool ISO for 1903. Using DISM I did some analysis, just out of curiosity, when deciding which ISO to use for my bootable flash drive I'll use around the office to deploy any fresh installs. Here's my initial findings, question to follow.

Checksums verified after download.

Windows 10 (consumer editions), version 1903 (x64) - DVD (English) [from MSDN]:

For short:	MSDN C ISO
File:	en_windows_10_consumer_editions_version_1903_x64_dvd_b980e68c.iso
SHA1:	344ca92459c23663d5f857c72a7c030f85f19be8
SHA256:	9846dfbdd7c39eb8d025e0f28e180c6f4084ecf87ecd11805cd19c205f7a3b4e

Windows 10 (business editions), version 1903 (x64) - DVD (English) [from MSDN]:

For short:	MSDN B ISO
File:	en_windows_10_business_editions_version_1903_x64_dvd_37200948.iso
SHA1:	dd9a1a27c5c58140b13facf6755a0c4a40ff0a6d
SHA256:	50e0139646630f94d9036edaab1b91e9067741a196aa6205550659e867518bae

MediaCreationTool for Windows 10 1903 x64 ISO download option:

For short:	MCT ISO
File:	Windows.iso
SHA1:	698190804eb543f77e5332011312e5633b38986e
SHA256:	a446b55fca0e28732dc23b2c7af7cffc66ed6fd5ead3c0c0b7c6564562ebfb65

The downloading of the MediaCreationTool, it's subsequent ISO and all the DISM commands were run from a fresh install of the Business editions MSDN download. I had only removed the EI.CFG file so that my OEM license was detected and used automagically. Windows Update had been fully exercised before any actions taken (side note: Is there a better/more succinct phrase for manually running Windows Update over and over, including reboots, until it finally comes up empty?). The local machine license was a Pro for Workstations and was fully activated prior to any downloads or analysis occurred.

Step 1: Using 7-zip v19.00 I extracted the ISO files, each to their own folder.
Step 2: WinMerge the extracted folders to compare contents.
Results: Every file in all three ISO's was identical with these exceptions...

* boot.wim, install.wim (including install.esd) were different size in all three ISO's, which I understand is to be expected given that they each contain a different set of indexes/editions.
* install.wim is named install.esd in the MCT ISO, which simply seems to be a container change for compression purposes in what would be otherwise identical content.
* The MCT ISO contained two unique files: product.ini and ws.dat, for which I do not know the purpose.
* The MSDN B ISO contained an EI.cfg file with volume licensing entries, which seems expected for an MSDN download.

Ok so now I start to compare the DISM Get-WimInfo data.

DISM /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:<path to install.wim|esd>

	MSDN Consumer Editions install.wim	MSDN Business Editions install.wim	MediaCreation Tool install.esd
	<index #:Size in bytes>	<index #:Size in bytes>	<index #:Size in bytes>
Home	1:13,998,570,900		1:13,998,570,900
Home N	2:13,189,869,300		2:13,189,869,300
Home Single Language	3:14,000,352,819		3:14,000,352,819
Education	4:14,277,676,521	1:14,277,918,698	4:14,277,676,521
Education N	5:13,472,481,418	2:13,472,638,276	5:13,472,481,418
Enterprise		3:14,277,989,444
Enterprise N		4:13,472,531,803
Pro	6:14,275,465,030	5:14,275,707,207	6:14,275,465,030
Pro N	7:13,470,575,774	6:13,470,716,248	7:13,470,575,774
Pro Education	8:14,277,606,283	7:14,277,848,460
Pro Education N	9:13,472,410,280	8:13,472,567,138
Pro for Workstations	10:14,277,641,168	9:14,277,883,345
Pro N for Workstations	11:13,472,445,615	10:13,472,602,473

I then ran DISM with the /index option, once per index per wim/esd. For anyone who is as OCD as I am I can confirm that the size in bytes returned by the /index option did match the size for the given index from the non /index DISM command for the given .wim/.esd file. Of note is that the 'Version' line was reported as 10.0.18362 for every index in all three wim files.

I piped the output from DISM into various text files for comparison. Ignoring the specific index number and comparing the output from each Edition from the three wim files (for example the Pro Edition from all three wim files) showed that while some of the meta data like file creation and modify times were different, the number of files, directories, version, was all the same. The only pertinent difference was the size.

Why, among comparable versions and editions would the size be different? Especially with the similarity in number of files and directories?

I also thought it was a bit weird that the MCT ISO contained Education versions, which is supposedly based on Enterprise, and Pro editions, but no Pro Education. Seems to me there are some huge inefficiencies going on with the lack of layering used when they package these things. But I digress.

I've begun to extract the wim files with 7-zip to compare their contents but that's taking a good long time. Will update when I can.

TL;DR questions:
1) Why are there different sizes for indexes of the same edition and version?
2) What is the purpose of the ws.dat and product.ini files in the ISO downloaded with the MCT?