If I convert my WIM to ESD to save space on my thumb drive, is there any speed differences when installing (does ESD take longer to install where it is compressed more than WIM)?
Check your windows add/remove option (turn windows feature on/off and install .net Framwork 3.5. This was my exact problem and the cure. It was many frustrating hours to find the culprit that broke WU...and apparently on or about the same day as yours...mine broke but now all is well.
If you frequently install Windows doing so from a fast USB3 flash drive is the best way to make the initial data transfer faster. The SanDisk Extreme Pro 3.1 is crazy fast reading and writing but also expensive. I bought one for installs and both dumping the OS onto the flash drive and installing windows is very fast.
I think usb3 is more useful for install IP builds, because almost each week you have new build. Soon we get 2 builds a week because this is the end of 19H1 IP builds. For Final releases like RS5 is enough usb2 or DVD burner.
Once you go fast USB3 flash drive, something like a burned DVD seems like stone age tech. I have to do a windows 10 build and install later today. I will record the initial load from flash drive and see if I can upload it.
Yeah big difference there, though even with USB SuperSpeed you have to chose your thumb drive, they can have a wide range of speed performance. Right now my favorite is Samsung Fit, good speed and inexpensive. Windows installs are amazingly fast using an autounattend script, I haven't timed it, but less than five minutes. I had a bad experience with SanDisk, bought a bunch of their SSD Plus units only to have endless troubles with them, systems that would not boot reliably and filesystem corruption. Troubles instantly vanished when I went to Intel and Samsung drives. Their USB drives have also given me trouble before. So I've sworn them off, won't go near any of their products. They cost me about five hundred bucks in SSDs that are coasters now, pretty pissed off about that.
I have 3 extreme pro 3.1 flash drives, all work great and one of them has been used to install at least 100 Windows 10 systems. The others are used for high speed transfer of files from one system to another. Its great that most systems have USB 3 now, makes backup and restore so much faster. I have a Corsair gtx 3.1 as well and not only is it fast, it is also hilariously heavy.
Guys why do you make usb's and dvd's with windows images ? Simply extract iso on D: partition, rename it to win10(example) and restart go to command prompt and type D:\win10\setup.exe and that is all. You can format the C:\ part and make clean install, no need to make every time just need one clean install with windows 10 from usb in the beginning and after that install windows builds this way. Specially if the iso is big like latest jan 19. Always keep one usb with windows 10 for example 1803 just in case.
Customer PCs are usually single drive systems. All of my systems are single drives. USB 3.1 is far faster than HDD BTW.
Yeah, why would I take the time to set up multiple partitions when I can....... just install windows? There is no chance in hell that setting up a partition and then copying the install image over is a faster setup than just installing.
My test rig 1 has 2 SSD (incl 1 - M.2) w/ 3 - Win10 OSs Main rig 2 SSDs w/ 4 OSs, 1 dedicated for AV scanning, 1 for GF visits, 1 for Premiere Pro & 1 Main. All PCs incl test rig 2 (3 OSs) also have SATA storage HDDs also, 1 partitioned & 2 not partitioned. Perfect setup arrangement for my work/testing/play. *1 partition per PC is not enough here, nice to have extra OSs IMO.