you don't need to clean the SoftwareDistribution folder, it gets completely deleted when sysprep is executed. -andy-
Thanks, I've actually only just been using that particular script for a few weeks as a friend gave it to me who was working on Win8.1 images and asked me what I usually delete to make the image smaller He put the softwaredistribution part in there so I just left it but thanks for the reminder as I had forgotten about that and sysprep. Lately I've also been using NTLite to do a lot of these things (it removes NativeImages_vX and other caches) as I've been testing that and there's a lot of things that can be removed (beside component removal by NTLite, hehe) but few are as dramatic as nativeimage assemblies as they can grow pretty big. Especially nice when you integrate dotNET 4.5.x and have 4 assemblies in Win7. Another thing I do sometimes before applying sysprep is stop module installer service and remove the CBS logs (which can be pretty big too at times). If you install IE11 and sysprep Win7 there's normally also the webcache folder with 35/40mb dat file, that folder can be deleted completely as it regenerates when you start IE11 for the first time, etc. If you use sysprep and apply the reg tweak to enable folder view of the assembly folder, you can actually delete those folders manually live without having to take ownership, just check if mscorsvw.exe instances happen to be running and kill those if so (as the script does).
What do the registry fixes accomplish or improve? Any chance of a windows8U3-Mini for updating an offline W8.1 wim? komm hasn't done any updates for W8 since September and i've been using WHD to rebuild an updated offline wim from scratch, but eventually this will no longer be practical.
It's just registry values that were suggested in some KB articles: Code: KB2011767,KB2555948,KB2581464,KB2646060,KB2668751,KB2685007,KB2712435,KB2728738 KB2743013,KB2807849,KB2824491,KB2826910,KB2829589,KB2830154,KB2831013,KB2831154 KB2856657,KB2893519.KB2901005,KB2927681,KB3008627,KB922976, KB937624, KB942974 Windows 8.1 don't have the same discrepancy or much hotfixes, WU demanding most of replaced monthly rollups, that something cann't be solved from our side and resetbase command would solve the bloat issue
Unfortunately no this update must be executed online, because the registry values it fix are created after the OOBE user is created
Do we have to go with this every time? it will be added when it added You mean WHD moves it to Superseded? all is good here
Default Windows Update Jan 2015 WU KB2901983-.NET4.5.2 KB3019215 KB3020388 KB3021674 Kb3022777 KB3023266
I am having a slight problem with someone else's computer. WU keeps offering 2 KBs (2871997 and 3023266) I can install them from WU (completes very quickly) and they show as successful in the view update history. They keep returning though. I tried installing several times and the update history shows multiple entries as successfully installed. The original updates are 12.8MB and 6.4 MB respectively. The ones with the same KB offered by WU are 23KB each. Anyone know what may be causing this loop and how to get rid of it? I guess I could hide the entries, but that doesn't really solve anything. I would appreciate it if someone could help. Other than that WU seems to work okay. I also downloaded and installed the original KBs, but no change.
@adric - I have the same problem w/ my wife's laptop yesterday. Although, WU says it installed correctly KB3023266. I check CBS.log & found error in accessing one of the system files even though I login as administrator. I run SFC SCANNOW & let the system correct the problem. After that, kb3023266 is no longer a problem.
SFC came up clean. It turns out that the CBS Reg tree was missing a majority of the required subfolders which pretty much breaks WU. The update readiness tool didn't even run since it couldn't find anything in the registry. When this happens you basically have to do a repair install. Luckily, I had cloned the system to another partition as a backup a year and a half ago and it hadn't been used since. It was outdated and I had to install all the missing WU updates (about 175) to bring the system to the same fix level. The update readiness tool came up clean on that system, so I exported the good CBS reg tree and imported it on the broken system. I also had to delete all the files from \windows\servicing\packages and update it with the packages from the updated system. All seems to be working again.