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Inside Vista's Image-Based Install Process

Posted by Hemos on Mon Jul 24, 2006 10:03 AM
from the how-the-whole-bloody-thing-works dept.
Operating Systems Software Windows
KrispyGlider writes "Vista's installation process is dramatically different from any previous version of Windows: rather than being an 'installer,' the install DVD is actually a preinstalled copy of Windows that simply gets decompressed onto your PC. It is hardware agnostic, so it can adjust to different systems, and you can also install your own apps into it so that your Vista install becomes a full system image install. APCMag.com has published an interview with a Microsoft Australia tech specialist on the inner workings of it as well as a story that looks at some of the pros and cons of image-based installs."
+ -
story

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[+] Backslash: Will Image Installs Benefit Vista Adopters? 88 comments
Yesterday's post on the upcoming Windows Vista's image-based installer drew more than 450 comments. Some readers praised the change as sensible, even overdue, and others drew distinctions between various ways "image-based" software installations are implemented in real life, both in the Windows and Unix worlds, and supplied objections to the switch. Read on for some of the most interesting comments in the Backslash summary of the discussion.
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Inside Vista's Image-Based Install Process 50 Comments More /

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  • dual boot? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by yagu (721525) * <yayagu@gmaTWAINil.com minus author> on Monday July 24 2006, @10:06AM (#15769710) Journal

    This reminds me of other Microsoft installs I've done over the years, and it smacks of such disdain for the rest of the OS universe. Nowhere in the article, nor can I find evidence anywhere else is there an accomodation for an install where XP is just another OS. I remember my first experience with this, when I installed a Win98 on a linux box, and not only did Win98 not offer a dual boot, it (seemingly) gladly removed my linux MBR and formatted my partition without asking if it was okay, and without saying it had done so. That was quite a surprise.

    Does anyone know if there is a way to do this? (Though, knowing XP can point to more than one OS to boot, I'm guessing Microsoft is more gentle if there is a pre-existing Windows OS there.)

    I've googled for dual boot information, it looks to be similar to what I already know -- it's easier to set up a dual boot machine on a pre-existing Windows machine.

    • Re:dual boot? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2006, @10:10AM (#15769744)
      I've had installs of Linux remove my Windows MBR and force grub as the default, its not just windows

      • Re:dual boot? (Score:4, Informative)

        by kailoran (887304) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:21AM (#15769845)
        The thing is that unlike the Windows' MBR, grub can actually be configured to run the other OS if the user wants. Most distros autodetect and add the appropriate configs, so that there's zero effort needed.

        Installing Windows just nukes the existing MBR and the only thing you can do is run Windows, or start searching for a rescue cd/floppy.
          • Booting another OS from the NT boot loader is significantly more difficult than using a Linux boot loader GUI setup tool.

            The difference is quite extreme. Using tools like DD to generate copies of boot sectors, and then learning the NT boot.ini conventions is beyond most power users.

            • Re:dual boot? (Score:4, Insightful)

              by Random_Goblin (781985) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:55AM (#15770128)
              Booting another OS from the NT boot loader is significantly more difficult than using a Linux boot loader GUI setup tool.

              Why would you expect any different, not just from microsoft but from ANY company out to make money? Why make it easier to use your competitors' products?

              Does your Ford come with an instructon book to tell you how to fit a Nissan engine? No it doesn't because there's no good business case for them to do that.

              Conversely the kit car you built from parts probably can be adapted to take ford or nissan engines.Why? because the reason you get a kit car is the joy of building it, not which company sold it to you

              Comparing Microsoft OS and Linux and saying who's is like asking who would win in fight between Darth Vader and Capt Picard.
              Essentially pointless because they live in different universes.

              • Re:dual boot? (Score:4, Insightful)

                by jrumney (197329) on Monday July 24 2006, @11:04AM (#15770193) Homepage

                Why would you expect any different, not just from microsoft but from ANY company out to make money?

                Because the idea that dual-boot somehow causes them to lose money is a false one. They already sold you a copy of Windows, by making it difficult to use that alongside another OS, what are they expecting to acheive? Selling you two copies of Windows to satisfy your dual-boot urge?

                Clearly their only motivation is to be anti-competitive, which is what one expects from a convicted monopolist.

              • Re:dual boot? (Score:5, Funny)

                by Lord Ender (156273) on Monday July 24 2006, @01:05PM (#15771129) Homepage
                Comparing Microsoft OS and Linux and saying who's is like asking who would win in fight between Darth Vader and Capt Picard. Essentially pointless because they live in different universes.

                Same universe, different galaxies, different time periods, actually. Get your sci-fi right! This is slashdot!

        • Re:dual boot? (Score:5, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2006, @10:23AM (#15769859)
          Windows users [like me] just don't run Linux, e.g. not an issue.
          • Windows users [like me] just don't run Linux, e.g. not an issue.

            Mac users [like me] just can't fathom why anyone would want to run anything else; i.e. not an issue.

            Grammar fascist time. Now, you didn't make the original mistake, but you perpetuated it, and now you're on my "bad" list. (Snakes in your stocking this year, boy, and I'm not talking about the kind you hang over the fireplace.) "E.g." means "for example," and "i.e." means "in other words." (Translated, of course.) The way I remember is to consider how stupid I'd sound using it wrongly.

            Okay, not really. Mentally substitute "for egzample" whenever you use "e.g." to see if it works.

            I've also got a great mnemonic device that involves skinning purple hamsters for remembering how to use "who" and "whom" correctly if anyone is interested.

    • Re:dual boot? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Soleen (925936) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:13AM (#15769779)
      You can format, delete, or leave anoutched any partitions you want. becisally the same as in Windows XP, except they added GUI to that, and also you can't format into FAT32, it must NTFS from now on. As far as Boot Sectors go, I think Vista still does not give you any choices...

    • Re:dual boot? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dreamchaser (49529) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:13AM (#15769780) Homepage Journal
      Just to play Devil's Advocate here, but why SHOULD they facilitate the use of other OS'es? Look at the customers who make up 99% of their base:

      1. Home users who buy a machine with Windows pre installed. No worries about dual boot here.
      2. Corporate users who load a custom Windows image on new machines. No worries about dual boot here either.

      ALSO, if it really is just an image it would be a simple matter to just load it onto a partition then setup dual boot using GRUB. Anyone who feels they NEED dual boot probably already knows how to do it. Most modern Linux distros do a pretty good job of it for newbs too.

      Very very very few people NEED dual boot. Some do. Most do not. From Microsoft's point of view, why should they facilitate it when the people who really NEED it (i.e. developers) will have no problem either setting up dual boot or using virtualization?
      • I feel allow duel boot is a good house guest option. People took the effort to purchase your program, and take time to install it. It would be nice if it didn't kill what you already had installed. Microsoft doesn't need to make it a default but an option, I would love it if Install had a checkbox marked Overwrite Boot sector. If it detects more then 1 partition.

        • Re:A good house guest. (Score:4, Funny)

          by Random_Goblin (781985) on Monday July 24 2006, @11:13AM (#15770272)
          I feel allow duel boot is a good house guest option

          You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means.

          mind you...

          After a long boot sequence...
          XP: You are wonderful!
          Distro in black: Thank you -- I've worked hard to become so.
          XP: I admit it you are better than i am...
          Distro in black: Then why are you smiling?
          XP: because i know something you don't know.
          Distro in black: And what is that?
          XP: I am not left-handed....

        • Re: Appeal to Common Practice? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by E++99 (880734) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:40AM (#15769996) Homepage
          Just to play Devil's Advocate here, but why SHOULD they facilitate the use of other OS'es? Look at the customers who make up 99% of their base:
          In logical terms this is a fallacy known as an Appeal to Common Practice.
          If Linux distros can do it then Windows should be able to do it and should actually do it.
          That's hillarious. You mislabel the argument you're responding to as "Appeal to Common Practice", and then you put forth your own arguement, which IS the fallacy of "Appeal to Common Practice"!

    • I know XP actually offers to NOT format the install partition for you, which is nice if Windows has bricked and you don't do backups as often as you should.

      Vista can install to a secondary hard drive (from what I read it's the first MS OS to be able to do so, probably thanks to the new boot loader) and it automatically supports dual booting with older Windows' (NT based at least) and will detect them and automatically set up the boot loader (it can be changed with bcdedit.exe and there are a couple unoffi

      • Re:dual boot? (Score:5, Informative)

        by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:16AM (#15769810)
        frankly im waiting for someone to give me the ability to "Alt Tab" between OSs. i'd love to run linux primary and just alt tab to windows when i need to do MS shit.

        Have you tried VMWare (or any other virtualization system)?

        • Re:dual boot? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by xtracto (837672) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:30AM (#15769925) Journal
          frankly im waiting for someone to give me the ability to "Alt Tab" between OSs. i'd love to run linux primary and just alt tab to windows when i need to do MS shit.

          Have you tried VMWare (or any other virtualization system)?

          MMM yes but no...

          There is something interesting in what GP wrote. Of course virtualization exists but I think it would be quite interesting to have some kind of BIOS program that allowed you to change OS whenever you pressed a predetermined key combo.

          How to achieve this?, well I think the "hibernation" faccilities of current Operating systems will do the trick. What should happen is that, when you turn on your computer you boot in whatever OS you had, then when you press the supposed ALT+TAB shortcut the BIOS function sends the current system to hibernate (saves RAM to HD file, etc , etc) and boots the second OS. Then, if you press ALT+TAB again the same process will be done but instead of booting the computer will just restore the state from the hibernation file.

          It may seem something difficult but I think that will be way cool and unlike virtualization solutions you will not have any performance loss due to the software overhead (I am proposing some kind of software interrput which the guest OSs will call when the user presses the hotkey).

          Now that I think of it, please forget what I said, I am going directly to the USPTO :)

            • Re:dual boot? (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Angostura (703910) on Monday July 24 2006, @01:25PM (#15771290)
              I love reading comments from people who know just enough to post a smug put-down, but not quite enough to explain cogently why something is a silly idea.

        • Re:dual boot? (Score:5, Informative)

          by cyborch (524661) <spam@deck.dk> on Monday July 24 2006, @10:39AM (#15769986) Homepage Journal

          The new duo core CPUs have facilities for this. See Parallels [parallels.com] for the first signs of alt tab'ing between OS'es.

          In addition rumor has it that Leopard (the next version of OS X) will have something like this built in.

      • frankly im waiting for someone to give me the ability to "Alt Tab" between OSs. i'd love to run linux primary and just alt tab to windows when i need to do MS shit.
        It already exists, and it's only about ten thousand times easier than configuring a system for dual-boot. Go to vmware.com, and download the free "player" for your native OS, then download one of the many free pre-configured OS's or apps to run.
      • You should try Vmware. (i believe the player and server version are now free). I have a server that runs fedora 5 and vmware GSX server. Installed in vmware (as guests) is windows 2003, windows XP and windows 2000 all on the same machine.

        Each server runs as if it were an independent machine, if one goes down it doesnt take the whole box with it, each machine bridges to the main interface and has full network connectivity, viruses that affect one guest dont affect the others. I have been running this confi

  • At last (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Toreo asesino (951231) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:09AM (#15769735) Journal
    Hopefully this'll mean Windows may actually be able to deal with changing mainboard & cpu without freaking out and throwing its toys out of the pram.

    XP takes a swift nose-dive for me when I upgrade my core components; it makes upgrading an even more painful process. As for Linux, I've yet to test this, but I gather it responds much better than XP to new hardware?

    • Re:At last (Score:5, Informative)

      by OfNoAccount (906368) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:34AM (#15769954)
      Simple solution - immediately before you upgrade a major component, run:
      sysprep -nosidgen

      You have the choice of running with existing settings or running mini-setup if you're running XP SP2. The only thing I can't recall is what effect that'll have on activation...

      Otherwise the only other thing you'll have problems with is changing the underlying HAL from ACPI to non-ACPI.

      See: MS sysprep kb article [microsoft.com] and more usefully Killian's sysprep guide [geocities.com]

  • Fewer Choices? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stealie72 (246899) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:10AM (#15769746)
    If this is basically going to just decompress windows onto your drive, where do the install options come in to play?

    Still, anything that makes installs easier is probably a good thing, at least to the average user.

    • Re:Fewer Choices? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tim C (15259) on Monday July 24 2006, @11:01AM (#15770177)
      Still, anything that makes installs easier is probably a good thing, at least to the average user.

      While I agree in principle, generally speaking the average user will not be installing Windows, or any other OS.

        • Re:Fewer Choices? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Tim Browse (9263) on Monday July 24 2006, @11:49AM (#15770543)

          No wonder non-nerds all run windows, even the (pseudo?) nerds haven't tried Linux.

          'Nerd' is not a synonym for 'Linux user'. This may be a surprise to you; for many others it is not.

  • Does it install faster? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Poromenos1 (830658) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:11AM (#15769755) Homepage
    Does this make it install faster? How is it different from copying files? Going of on a rant, why are current installers so bloated? InstallShield is like 2 MB in itself, and MSI takes ages to install something. The only good installer I've seen is NSIS (and it's VERY good), it's like 30 KB, copies your files/makes whatever changes you want and that's it.

    What do other installers do that make them take hours to finish?

    • I'd say it is much different from copying files because it has to test for all kinds of hardware, generate a lot of configs and other file structures.

      The alternative to the image based install? Up until recently the betas have used the traditional installer and it was like watching paint dry - literally, it took 2 to 3 hours (with a non-working progress bar to boot). The latest beta took about 20min to install and an extra 10min to do first boot configuration.

      Compared to XP's install, Vista takes mayb

  • Pros & Cons summarized (Score:5, Insightful)

    by neonprimetime (528653) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:16AM (#15769807)
    This wasn't a Pros & Cons. It was a love-fest of the new Image-Based install process. Everything he wrote in that article was happy go lucky, no cons in site.

    • this means that the image isn't a bit-for-bit image of your disk layout, and hence you can apply the image to a new system without destroying the contents of the hard drive
    • Vista is hardware-agnostic, so you can use a single system image as a source for multiple hardware platforms, even if they have quite different hardware configurations
    • When capturing a system to a WIM file you can specify exclusions. For example, you can have a work directory on the system with temporary data.
    • Interestingly you can have as many images contained within one WIM file as you think you can manage, and any one of them can be marked as bootable.

  • However, all this is about to change. Windows Vista is based entirely around Microsoft's Windows Imaging Format (or WIM), a file-based imaging standard rather than a sector-based. this means that the image isn't a bit-for-bit image of your disk layout, and hence you can apply the image to a new system without destroying the contents of the hard drive.

    Wow how revolutionary.

    Oh, hang on a second while I untar this archive....

    • Re:File based imaging format?!?! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by EXMSFT (935404) on Monday July 24 2006, @01:34PM (#15771344)
      I don't believe TAR includes ACL and metadata information related to the filesystem. Or does it?

      • They can be. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by pavon (30274) on Monday July 24 2006, @02:30PM (#15771736)
        The tar file format, like most unix things has undergone several revisions and branches. In POSIX.1, a new format, called the Pax Interchange Format, was created as a backwards compatible extention of the tar format, that allowed for storing of arbitrary metadata. How this metadata is used is naturally left up to the system's implementation of tar and pax. I don't know how widely these extentions are used. I know that in Mac OS 10.4, metadata including resource forks are supported, but I think they implemented them using thier normal flat-file hacks (._myfile holds metadata for myfile), and not the pax extentions. This man file [freebsd.org] has a little more information.

  • By the time... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2006, @10:19AM (#15769828)
    Vista's released, won't DVDs be obsolete anyway?

    Maybe they can put both Vista and Duke Nuke Em 3D on the same HD-DVD/BluRay disc when they're released in a few years.

  • Hasta La Vista, La Manzana (Score:5, Funny)

    by digitaldc (879047) * on Monday July 24 2006, @10:20AM (#15769837)
    Some say Vista's image is tarnished, but I think we should wait until the next Apple commercial to see if it really works or not.

  • Article is stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MarkByers (770551) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:23AM (#15769864) Homepage Journal
    The final linked article starts with this dubious sounding statement:

    The bottom is about to fall out of the market for imaging tools like Symantec Ghost ... The Vista install DVD is, in fact, just one big system image.

    But then immediately contradicts itself by pointing out:

    But this flexibility only extends to the installation of Windows itself. To clone a full system with apps installed, Symantec Ghost or a similar utility must be used to create that image.

    People don't use Ghost to make a copy of an unconfigured fresh install of Windows, they configure it first, then Ghost it. This new installer will have no effect whatsoever on sales of Ghost, or any other imaging software. After such a terrible start to the article, I'm not sure it's even worth reading the rest.

    • Re:Article is stupid (Score:5, Informative)

      by mwalleisa (561970) <michael.e.wallei ... t ['com' in gap]> on Monday July 24 2006, @11:21AM (#15770335)
      When talking about using Symantec Ghost (or other), the author is referring to Windows XP installations, not Vista.
      FTFA:

      In the XP world, most advanced users are used to customising the Windows install disc. It's a straightforward, if tedious, process to slipstream service packs and patches, add extra drivers and create answer files that allow XP to install with no user input.

      But this flexibility only extends to the installation of Windows itself. To clone a full system with apps installed, Symantec Ghost or a similar utility must be used to create that image.

      However, all this is about to change. Windows Vista is based entirely around Microsoft's Windows Imaging Format (or WIM), a file-based imaging standard rather than a sector-based.

      (bold emphasis = mine)

  • Is it the same thing that we see on Ubuntu? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by namityadav (989838) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:28AM (#15769910)
    So is this revolutionary install concept an exact copy of what we see in Ubuntu?

  • Knoppix - Kanotix - Ubuntu - Windows (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bfree (113420) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:32AM (#15769942)
    I'm sure the idea goes back even further in time but I still find it interesting to see that the technique taken by knoppix, embraced by Kanotix and finally mimiced by Ubuntu is now being used by MS. The question is will you be able to carry around these vista images as a live system taking advantage of it's hardware detection to run your own copy of windows on any machine (real or virtual)? If not officially, will someone be able to produce a neat hack to do it? I would have thought everyone would like to have their own liveDVD of their system, featuring all the stuff they wanted installed and all their settings.

  • The wrong problem (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doctor Faustus (127273) <Slashdot.WilliamCleveland@Org> on Monday July 24 2006, @10:42AM (#15770009) Homepage
    This is vaguely interesting, I suppose, but I'd much rather see an image-based boot sequence. It should be much faster to copy 100 meg or so of stuff to RAM that to actually wait for all the programs to start up. You'd only need to do the real boot process after installing something, and make a new image before handing control to the user.

  • Darn, I was looking for a source-based install (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2006, @10:44AM (#15770028)
    I'd love to spend a week -emerge(ing) a Vista designed specifically for my computer.

  • Rootkit (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Darth Cider (320236) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:45AM (#15770038)
    MS is just anticipating virtual rootkits. Having an image to compare to the installed system will provide a check of subverted files etc.

  • Smalltalk and Emacs did this. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bobs666 (146801) on Monday July 24 2006, @10:58AM (#15770159)
    IMHO Imaging an OS install is a good thing.

    The mother of all windows, Smalltalk, Did just this.
    And when you where finished for the day ST did
    a sort of core dump to disk. When you want to
    start up it restored your workspace just where you left off.

    Emacs was so slow to load all of its lisp macros
    the authors did the same thing dumping the core
    image into an a.out file and starting that each time.

    Perhaps You think Imaging a disk is different.
    But I propose that its just the same thing as a different
    level of the memory hierarchy. You just install into
    a 800meg partition and dump to CD. same thing.
    Make it bootable, add a start up that rus the installer
    and copy it to disk.

  • *bleh* I hated it when it was called RIS (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Aslan72 (647654) <psjuvin&ilstu,edu> on Monday July 24 2006, @11:41AM (#15770486)
    I'm partly responsible for an image that goes on around 5-600 machines at a Midwestern University College lab. We tried RIS when it was out, but althought it was cool, it was simply not practical. The savings of having 'one' image really didn't outweigh the impracticality of it taking 2-3 hours per workstation per lab.

    This is no different; currently it doesn't support multicasting and so although it's 'revolutionary' (read: RIS) it still doesn't beat the ability to push down and image to a workstation is less than 20 minutes...oops, did I say a workstation, I meant a lab.

    It still won't beat Ghost any time soon, IMO.

    • Re:*bleh* I hated it when it was called RIS (Score:5, Informative)

      by gruhnj (195230) on Monday July 24 2006, @01:04PM (#15771123)
      This is no different; currently it doesn't support multicasting and so although it's 'revolutionary' (read: RIS) it still doesn't beat the ability to push down and image to a workstation is less than 20 minutes...oops, did I say a workstation, I meant a lab.

      Windows Deployment Services, the replacement for RIS that will be comming out around the same time Vista ships, does exactly that. RIS only does the OS install well. Once you create your master image, you can place that onto a WDS server and multicast it out to as many computers as you have bandwidth. My current image when run deployed with imageX comes in at 25% less space (both images on max compression) and deploys in aprox 12 min for the image copy, plus the normal mini-setup time.

      Ghost aint going away, but it will be eaten away from at the bottom with WDS.

  • copying a bunch of files is the RIGHT way (Score:5, Insightful)

    by radarsat1 (786772) on Monday July 24 2006, @01:05PM (#15771127) Homepage
    Damn it, one of the things that always annoys me about Windows is that it's NOT as simple as copying a bunch of files.
    This is mostly due to their inane and out-dated drive lettering scheme.

    In Linux (or any Unix), I can move my installed system to a different drive or partition just by copying it. I can install an entire system within a folder of another system. All I have to do is change my drive mounts, add some symlinks, or use chroot, and I can put the entire system anywhere and it's as if nothing changed.

    When my Dad bought a new harddrive because his old one was dying, we tried in vain to copy his old system over to the new drive. First we tried imaging it using "dd" on a liveCD, but that didn't work. Then we tried making a new filesystem and using "cp" to just copy the whole thing. That didn't either. We didn't want to spend money on Norton Ghost, just for a one-time thing.. He ended up having to re-install and re-activate XP, re-install all his MS Office software he'd had some trouble with installing in the first place, and finally setting up a whole new system. Just because he wanted to replace his drive!

    That, compared to the number of times I've moved my Linux system without a single hitch... I can't believe people put up with this crap. Now instead of keeping things simple, they're moving even FURTHER away from a file-based approach?

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