@everyone of good intellect&understanding
i guess healthy competition for the smallest os, which, believe me, is useful, and not only a curiosity, must be gauged on the wim, not on the vhd. I have the smallest 19041/2 264 build combo (vhd+wim) below 3gb put together (of course vhd.gz 15megs). all this was done with my chopping sequence, which could be coupled with any further and wider chopping. of course. I am now trying an older version. I can easily keep my chopping under control, even though it was decided against, but no prob, i will let u know. the only problem is time.
All tests made on a VHD so far, are to verify the undesired concecuences (if any), And find the way to prevent them (if exists).
There is no need to do it manually on final VHD every time you make a new installation on VHD, all brute force chopping made on previous test, can be included on your WimBootCompress.ini under [ExclusionList] section, and it will do it for you during re-capture.
If you want to reduce WinSxS folder, do it before re-capture and then copy back your desired Manifests folder (if required).
From quote on first post:
Then any files/folders added by the user to [ExclusionList] section will not be included on the new WIM file (no matter the consequences), edit it wisely to avoid future troubles after apply the new WIM on a new installation.
In fact it is as a chopping by brute force.
As already said, all included in that [ExclusionList] section will not be copied to the new WIM file, and then obviously will make the WIM file smaller and in consecuence also the final Normal, Compact or Wimboot installation on VHD will be smaller too.
I suggest to add your desired lines right on top of the list to easy find them latter.
As an example:
Let's say you want to cut: Windows\SysWOW64 folder and Windows\Microsoft.NET folder
Then just adding following two lines on blue, will not copy those folders when re-capturing:
\Windows\SysWOW64\* >>> This means DO NOT copy Windows\SysWOW64 folder and all its content to the WIM
\Windows\Microsoft.NET\* >>> This means DO NOT copy Windows\Microsoft.NET folder and all its content to the WIM
NOTE: Only included 5 lines from the [ExclusionList] to make the example shorter.
Your list will be like this:
[ExclusionList]
\Windows\SysWOW64\*
\Windows\Microsoft.NET\*
\MSOCache\*
\Recovery\*
\$bootdrive$
\$dwnlvldrive$
\$lsdrive$
........
alacran