Tip of the Day: WIMBoot Limitations

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Today’s Tip…

Yesterday I sent out a tip about WIMBoot.  Today I’d like to add some information about its limitations.  

  • Can only be used on Windows 8.1 + 8.1 Update.  No server versions.
  • I actually mentioned this yesterday, but WIMBoot is available only for UEFI-based systems that boot to a GPT disk.
  • The standard Windows partition and the images partition must be stored on a SSD or eMMC drive.  Any additional drives can be rotational media (magnetic based) drives.  This applies to hybrid drives as well (SSD+HDD combo drives).
  • Some backup, antivirus, and encryption tools aren’t compatible with WIMBoot images.  This is due to the fact that they open files for writing (even though they may not actually write anything).  When this happens, a copy of the files are made on the standard Windows partition…causing us to lose the space that we gained.