Updated: The ESD files of the updated RTM build 17134 are already available online. We have changed the links in this post so you can download the latest build.
Earlier there were rumors that 1803, aka Redstone 4, would start shipping on April 10, but something didn't work out and the developers had to re-create the RTM build. Microsoft has not yet named official date launching a new Windows versions 10, and also said nothing about the title of this update. Although release build 17134 is already available in Fast Ring, Slow Ring and Release Preview, the update is not yet available in the Media Creation Tool. Nevertheless, stable versions of various editions are already on Microsoft servers, so all interested users can download ESD files and compile an ISO installation file from them for clean install 17134. You will need a downloadable ESD decoder and a list of all ESD file references. It is located.
- Download and unpack the decoder to any folder you like.
- Download and unzip the file with links to ESD files. Run the XML file in any browser you like.
- Now you need to find the assembly you need. Click on Ctrl + F and search for “ ru-ru” (uk-ua for Ukrainian assemblies and en-us for American English). The browser will display a list of all editions in Russian. Navigate further by the parameters Edition(Professional / Home / Education) and Architecture(x64 / x86).
- Then copy the link from the FilePath line. It should look like this: 17134.1.180410-1804.rs4_release_CLIENTCONSUMER_RET_x64FRE_en-us.esd... Paste the link into address bar browser and wait for the ESD file to load.
- Now place the downloaded file in the ESD decoder folder and run the file dectypt.cmd on behalf of the Administrator.
- Select which edition to include in the composition (1 - all editions, 2 - one of the above, 3 - a number of editions and 4 - random edition). Press the corresponding number and then Enter.
- In the next step, select 1 or 2. The first will create a standard ISO, and the second will create an ISO with compressed install.esd.
- Wait until the process is complete, after which you will have a ready-to-use ISO file. Write it to a USB flash drive or disk, after which you can use the created drive to install Windows 10 Spring Creators Update. For more details on this procedure, see the article "".
If you don't want to play with ESD files, you can wait for Microsoft to release an updated Update Assistant and an updated version of the Media Creation Tool. The most impatient can confidently update using the method described above, since these are the assemblies that will be sent to users in the next few days.
Which could be downloaded on the official Microsoft website a year ago, there was an operating system image file called install.wim ... The install.wim file is a disk image that contains the operating system files in a compressed state. During the installation of Windows, all files are unzipped from the install.wim image to disk (C :), by and large, this is the main stage of installing the operating system on our computer. There is also a tool called Dism , with which you can integrate drivers and updates into the install.wim file, enable and disable various components of the operating system, restore the integrity of Windows system files, etc. But in recent times in all distributions of Windows 8.1, Windows 10, instead of the install.wim file, there is an operating system image file install.esd ... What kind of beast is this, we will analyze in today's article.
1. What is install.esd and install.wim file
2. What is the difference between the install.esd file and the install.wim file
3. Does Microsoft have tools to convert install.esd to install.wim or look for third-party software?
4. Is it possible to use the install.wim file instead of install.esd in the Windows 10 distribution after conversion, or will it be necessary to convert the install.wim file to install.esd in reverse?
What is the install.esd file in install.wim
Greetings to all! The install.esd and install.wim files located in the distribution (ISO image) of Windows 10 are archives that contain the files of the Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 operating system in a compressed state, and Dism is a tool for working with these archives ...
.Wim or .esd archives can contain one or several other archives (releases) of operating systems (Professional, Home, etc.). Archives inside Wim or Esd files are called - Images. Any Image in the archive is always assigned an index 1, 2, 3, 4 ...
For example, we have downloaded Windows distribution 10 and connected it to the virtual disk drive (E :), go to the "sources" folder of the distribution kit and see the install.esd archive file,
to find out which Images are inside the archive, enter the command at the command line:
Dism / Get-WimInfo /WimFile:E:\sources\install.esd
where E: \ sources \, this is the path to the install.esd file
As you can see, in the archive install.esd is fourWindows Image with indexes: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Image details: E: \ sources \ install.esd
Index: 1
Name: Windows 10 Pro
Description: Windows 10 Pro
Size (Bytes): 14 244 778 516
Index: 2
Name: Windows 10 Home
Description: Windows 10 Home
Size (Bytes): 14,040 329 647
Index: 3
Name: Windows 10 Home Single Language
Description: Windows 10 Home Single Language
Size (Bytes): 14,047,031,800
Index: 4
Name: Windows 10 Education
Description: Windows 10 Education
Size (Bytes): 13 988 924 495
How the install.esd file differs from the install.wim file
It is important to know that when creating a new archive of the Windows 8.1, 10 operating system, a WIM archive file (install.wim) is always created, an Image is created in the archive (for example, Windows 10 Pro) and index 1 is assigned to it. Then, using the Dism tool to archive other Images are added. The added second image will be assigned index 2, the next added image will be assigned 3, and so on. The created images can have three types of compression:
/ compress: none(without compression)
/ compress: fast(fast compression)
/ compress: maximum(maximum compression), if you do not specify the / compress parameter when creating an image, then the compression will be Fast (fast compression).
Microsoft developed another type of compression in 2014 Recovery(maximum maximum)
This type compression compresses Windows files into an archive even more, resulting in a file install.esd weighssmaller install.wim file by 30%.
Only 3 Dism parameters work with the recovery compression type:
Dism / Export-Image ...... / compress: recovery
Dism / apply-image.
Dism / Get-WimInfo
To make it easier to work with archives, an archive with images compressed in Recovery is usually given the extension
ESD ... The esd extension is desirable, but not required. It is wrong to assume that if the archive has esd resolution, then compression can only be recovery, just as if the archive has wim resolution, then compression can only be fast, max and none, I have come across wim files with recovery compression several times. Dism does not work by expansion, but by compression - you can put ESD permission when creating an image and Dism will create an image with "fast" compression.I made a small video on this topichttps://yadi.sk/i/B_8mfOjfxhqSkHopefully, you now understand how the install.esd file differs from the install.wim file. Both files: install.esd and install.wim are archives with Windows files, and they differ in the type of compression. Ffile archive - install.esd is compressed more and weighs less.
When updating the Windows 10 build through the Windows update system, installation image new preliminary (insider) Windows assemblies downloaded to the user's computer in a specially new image format - ESD ( ElectronicSoftwareDownload). ESD is encrypted and compressed. WIM ( WindowsImagingFormat) Windows image.
This image distribution format was first used in Windows 8.1 when updating the operating system online. Unlike a WIM file, an ESD image cannot be mounted or modified. Microsoft plans to widely use this format for deploying systems. Compared to a WIM file, the .ESD file is about 30% smaller, which is a big advantage when distributing it over the Internet.
In this article, we will show you how to decrypt and convert a Windows 10 ESD image into a familiar Windows installation image that can be burned to DVD or USB disk and use to clean install Windows 10 or perform an update.
Note... In fact, the easiest way to get an installation ISO image of Windows 10 and burn it to a USB flash drive / DVD is to use a free one that will help you download latest version Windows image 10 directly from Microsoft servers.
How to get ESD file with Windows 10 image
Let's figure it out where can i getESDfile? When upgrading from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1, the install.esd file is downloaded in the background from the Microsoft repository and saved to the directory C: \ Windows\ SoftwareDistribution\ Download\ (some ID} .
Get file Install.ESD with the latest build of Windows 10, you can go to installed system to Start -> Settings -> Updates and Security ( Start -> PC Settings -> Update and recovery -> Preview builds)... If a new build is available for your Windows 10, you will be prompted to download and install a new image.
Run a system update for the new build, but do not overload the computer. During Windows updates will download the files required to perform the system version update. After the download is finished, open the explorer and go to the directory C: \ $ Windows. ~ BT\ Sources... Find the file in this directory Install.ESD(it is) and copy it to any other directory. This is the .ESD file with a compressed image of the latest build of Windows 10.
Advice... In already installed Windows 10 Technical Preview ESD file can be copied from C: \ RecoveryImage \ Install.esd directory.
To get information about which Windows images are inside the ESD file, you can use the standard DISM utility:
DISM / Get-WimInfo /WimFile:"C:\iso\install.esd "
Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 10.0.17134.1
Details for image: C: \ iso \ install.esd
Index: 1
Name: Windows 10 Home
Description: Windows 10 Home
Size: 15,439,030,656 bytes
Index: 2
Name: Windows 10 Home Single Language
Description: Windows 10 Home Single Language
Size: 15,439,078,082 bytes
Index: 3
Name: Windows 10 Education
Description: Windows 10 Education
Size: 15,662,641,239 bytes
Index: 4
Name: Windows 10 Pro
Description: Windows 10 Pro
Size: 15,662,520,267 bytes
The operation completed successfully.
In our example, there are several system images inside the install.esd archive. For example, Windows 10 Pro has an index of 4.
Knowing the ordinal index of the Windows image in the ESD file, you can export it to a WIM file using the command:
dism / export-image /SourceImageFile:c:\iso\install.esd / SourceIndex: 4 / DestinationImageFile: c: \ iso \ win10pro.wim / Compress: max / CheckIntegrity
The resulting WIM file can be converted to an ISO image using third-party utilities.
ESD Decrypter Utility
To convert ESD image to ISO file, we will use the utility command line ESDDecrypter(ESDToolKit) , which can be downloaded on GitHub: https://github.com/gus33000/ESD-Decrypter/releases/. ESD Decrypter is written in PowerShell, so you can easily check its source code (to generate ISO image from the WIM file, the cdimage.exe utility is used).
Dism ++ utility for converting the install.esd file
To convert ESD image to ISO file, you can use a simple and convenient graphical utility Dism++ (https://www.chuyu.me/en/index.html) which does the same as the ESD Decrypter script but has a more user-friendly GUI.
Or $ Windows. ~ BT, $ Windows. ~ WS. It turns out that the ESD folder also stores various temporary files that can restore the system if, for example, critical error... But the question comes, is it possible to delete the ESD folder? I want to say that yes, you can. The folder stores recovery files, which weigh a lot and if you do not have a lot of hard disk space, then you should delete it.
Advice! I suggest that at first you do not delete this folder, as well as Windows.old and others, since if you are only recently using Windows 10, then you can test it for now. If everything suits you, then you can delete the entire unnecessary garbage... I recommend doing this by staff Windows tools Disk Cleanup.
So, if you have administrator rights, then go to the utility Disk Cleanup, you can enter it in the search box.
Now, in our field "Disks" need to choose system disk, usually it is (C :). Click OK.
We are waiting for the system to estimate the disk space that can be freed.
The following window will appear, in which you must click the button "Clear system files» ... Again, we are waiting for the estimated disk size.
We confirm actions by pressing a button "Delete files" and wait for the operation to be completed.
Once the temporary files are removed you can do some more. To do this, in the Disk Cleanup utility, go to the tab "Additionally" and where the point is System Restore and Shadow Copy push "Clear"... It is advisable to delete all control points, and leave the last one, so that you can return in case of something.
Actually, that's all. If you have any questions, ask them in the comments, let's try to figure it out.
Looking for an answer to the question, where did the space on the C drive go in Windows systems 8.1 and 10, at the root of this disk, many find an "ESD" folder weighing more than 3 GB. What is this folder and is it possible to delete it without causing it operating system harm?
Folder ESD at the root of the C drive appears, as a rule, after a global system update. For example, if you upgraded from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 or from Windows 10 to Windows 10, but in the Anniversary Update edition. Also, the ESD folder can be found after applying the lightweight method reinstall Windows using the Refresh Windows utility. Another example is updating the system using the Media Creation Tool to restore the integrity of system files.
The ESD folder contains a distribution kit of Windows 8.1 or 10, but the distribution kit is defective, but limited, which, as a rule, includes only one edition of the system, suitable for updating the current system. In the process of a global update Windows utilities Update Assistant, Media Creation Tool and Refresh Windows download temporary installation files from Microsoft servers to disk from your computer, some of which are the contents of the ESD folder. The temporary installation files are also downloaded to two other folders on the C drive - $ Windows. ~ BT and $ Windows. ~ WS... Their specifics and methods of removal have already been described on the site in this article.
For the update process, the system downloads the installation files, but after the operation is completed, it is in no hurry to delete them. And these files continue to occupy disk space in some cases as dead weight. Why? From installation files located in the ESD, $ Windows. ~ BT and $ Windows. ~ WS folders, the system does not get rid of, because they can be used to restore it. But if Windows is stable, and recovery is unlikely to become necessary, or if the ability to rollback is provided in advance backup copy by using third party program, these are the same cases when the ESD folder is a dead weight cluttering the C drive. Accordingly, under such conditions it makes sense to get rid of this folder. You can get rid of it with the usual Del key.