wimboot not releasing system memory?

[steve6375]

Hi

Happy New Year!

I am the developer of Easy2Boot (http://www.easy2boot.com), I posted this Q on http://lists.ipxe.org but have had no response, so I am posting here.

I am using wimboot to boot from a Windows ISO from a USB flash drive using grub4dos

A sample grub4dos menu is:

Code:

title Install Windows10x64UK_Oct_2018 using wimboot method
map /Windows10x64UK_Oct_2018.iso (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
# the root path now points to the files inside the ISO file
# hd0,0 is the USB drive that we booted from
kernel (hd0,0)/wimboot image=2
initrd @startup.bat=(hd0,0)/startup.bat @winpeshl.ini=(hd0,0)/winpeshl.ini @bcd=/boot/bcd @boot.sdi=/boot/boot.sdi @boot.wim=/sources/boot.wim
boot

I am using current version of wimboot (size 51,392 bytes, 17 May 2017)
When I boot from a virtual system (Virtual Box) which has 1024MB of RAM, I get various memory problems reported by WinPE.
If I run taskmgr.exe it reports Total Memory 683, Cached 107, Available 27, Free 5.

If I run the same ISO using a standard grub4dos mechanism, taskmgr.exe reports the system has 1023MB of memory and I get no memory issues (Total 1023, Cached 262, Available 394, Free 140).

If I increase the amount of RAM to 2GB there is no problem using wimboot.

Is this to be expected or has wimboot failed to release some memory?

P.S. As a second question, is there a way to inject a file into X:\ (root of X: drive).

[dontlook]

(2019-01-04 12:59)steve6375 Wrote:  P.S. As a second question, is there a way to inject a file into X:\ (root of X: drive).

I tried this a couple different ways and did not succeed. However, you could inject your file and startnet.cmd in the environment, then startnet.cmd can copy/move the file to the root.


Alternatively, if this file won't change(often) you can just crack the WIM open with DISM on Windows and place the file there.

[steve6375]

(2019-01-07 19:19)dontlook Wrote:  

(2019-01-04 12:59)steve6375 Wrote:  P.S. As a second question, is there a way to inject a file into X:\ (root of X: drive).

I tried this a couple different ways and did not succeed. However, you could inject your file and startnet.cmd in the environment, then startnet.cmd can copy/move the file to the root.
Alternatively, if this file won't change(often) you can just crack the WIM open with DISM on Windows and place the file there.

Thanks for the reply and trying it. I have managed to use startnet.cmd to copy a \AutoUnattend.xml file to X:\. It is then automatically picked up by Setup.

I notice that ttf font files can be injected. Where are these actually copied to? What determines where different files are injected?

[NiKiZe]

(2019-01-07 20:36)steve6375 Wrote:  I notice that ttf font files can be injected. Where are these actually copied to? What determines where different files are injected?

There is no difference for different file extensions, everything injected with wimboot goes into windows\system32.
If you are seeing fonts being loaded and working, it is because it is totally fine to load font's from the running executables directory, or any other specified path (or memorystream)