System folder ESD, can it be deleted? ESD Decrypte utility - easily convert ESD to a bootable ISO image of Windows Esd file in a bootable USB flash drive

Which could be downloaded on the official Microsoft website a year ago, there was an image file operating system called install.wim . The install.wim file is a disk image containing operating system files in a compressed state. In progress Windows installations 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 operating system components, and restore integrity system files Windows, etc. But in lately 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 animal this is, we will look at in today’s article.

1. What is install.esd and install.wim file

2. How does the install.esd file differ from the install.wim file?

3. Does Microsoft have tools to convert install.esd to install.wim or should I look for third-party programs?

4. After conversion, can I use the install.wim file instead of install.esd in the Windows 10 distribution kit or will I need to reverse convert the install.wim file to install.esd?

What is the install.esd file in install.wim

Greetings everyone! The install.esd and install.wim files, located in the distribution kit (ISO image) of Windows 10, are archives in which the files of the Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 operating system are located in a compressed state, and Dism is a tool for working with these archives .

Archives.wim or.esd may contain one or more other archives (releases) of operating systems (Professional, Home, etc.) Archives located inside Wim or Esd files are called Images. Any Image in the archive is always assigned an index of 1, 2, 3, 4...

For example, you and I downloaded the Windows 10 distribution and connected it to virtual disk drive(E:), go to the “sources” folder of the distribution and see the archive file install.esd,

to find out which Images are inside the archive, enter command line command:

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 located fourWindows Image with indexes: 1, 2, 3, 4.

What is the difference between the install.esd file and the install.wim file?

It's 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, the archive other Images are added. The second image added will be assigned an index of 2, the next added image will be assigned an index of 3, and so on. The created images can have three types of compression:

/compress:none(no 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 the archive even more strongly, resulting in a file install.esd weighs30% smaller install.wim file.

Only 3 work with the recovery compression type Dism parameter:

Dism /Export-Image...... / compress:recovery

Dism/apply-image.

Dism/Get-WimInfo

I hope you now understand the difference between the install.esd file and the install.wim file. Both files: install.esd and install.wim are archives with Windows files, and they differ in the type of compression. File archive - install.esd is more compressed and weighs less.

The .ESD format stands for Electronic Software Distribution. It is not a format in the usual sense of the word, but a technology that is intended for distribution. It is used to allow programs Microsoft distributed electronically. Among the distributions there is also an image of the Windows 10 operating system. If the .ESD format is used for distribution, then all the programs that are presented in it will have a compressed form. If you download an image of the new operating system, it will be 35 percent larger in size than the Windows 10 file downloaded in .ESD format.

This technology is not yet widely used for the distribution of Microsoft products. For now, only those users who have access to the corporation’s internal lines can use it. Distributions in .ESD format are not designed for ordinary users. However, on official internet Microsoft has several programs in .ESD that are located in open access.

Today there are a large number of questions about of this format for the reason that users cannot understand why there are programs in the public domain in the .ESD format, but they are almost impossible to download.

Initially, you need to go to the official Microsoft website and download the ESD image of the Windows 10 operating system from there. There are direct links on it. It should be noted that the OS images will be in English.

If the user already has Windows 10 downloaded, then there is no need to download its ESD image. It can be found in the system folders of the operating system. It should simply be copied from one folder and moved to another.

When the ESD image is downloaded, you need to decrypt or unpack it. It should look like an ISO image. This procedure can be carried out using programs: Decrypter, NLite, WinReducer Wim Converter. First you need to figure out how this procedure is carried out in the most easy-to-use Decrypter utility.

First you need to unpack the archive and save all its contents in the ESD-Decrypter folder.

You must also copy the Windows 10 operating system and its ESD image to this folder from the system folders.

Then you need to go to the folder and open the decrypt.cmd file there. Launch this file must be done as an administrator.

In the Enter your Option column you need to put the number 1.

After this, you need to press any button on the keyboard to move to the next step.

If we go to the ESD-Decrypter folder, we can notice that an ISO image file has appeared in it.

This file can be used to install the operating system at any time. It may also be required to create bootable flash drive, or installation disk.

If the user has computer device If you already have an operating system, you do not need to download the ESD image from the website. It is located in the C:\$Windows.~BT\Sources folder.

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Currently operating room Windows system 10 is a popular product. Its ISO image can be downloaded from the official Microsoft website. However, many users are interested in another ESD format. Programs 4.81 14

Under normal conditions, for creating an image deployment uses a WIM file. It can be created using different methods, but it was a wim image and remains a wim image. This same file is used not only for network installation, but also for writing to a bootable USB flash drive in order to install an operating system with all the necessary complex software. But recently I was preparing an image for an office that uses Windows 10 LTSB. I didn’t notice the catch right away, since I was using a computer on which the reference system was already installed. The system was prepared to work using WDS (Windows Deployment Services) and everything went as planned. But when I started preparing a bootable USB flash drive for offline installation of the operating system, that’s when the rake dancing began. There was simply no file in the right place in the ISO image install.wim. But in its place a file was found install.esd. As it turned out, Microsoft developed new format image files in order to increase the compression ratio and support the ability to download the image via the Internet. To do this, we had to increase the compression ratio. WIM images also support compression, but it is believed that the ESD image can have extremely strong compression and this will allow you to download operating system updates via the Internet.

I was wondering how much different WIM and ESD compression is, but now I won't waste time on such trifles. Let's take the developers' word for it.

So, what should we do if a disk with an ESD image was used? Yes, in fact, you won’t have to do anything new. On the disk used to download the program imagex.exe. To work with the ESD image, you can use the program DISM.exe from the Windows ADK distribution for Windows 10, do not confuse with Windows AIK. Windows AIK also has DISM, but it can only work with WIM images.

The entire creation procedure is similar to creating a disk with a WIM image:

• Create a bootable flash drive
• install Windows
• install the necessary software,
• copy the required data,
• prepare the OS with the program Sysprep,
• then boot from LiveCD or over the network,
• create an ESD image,
• replace the file with the created image install.esd on a flash drive.

Of all these operations, only the creation of an ESD image is unusual. To create an image, you need to copy the program to a LiveCD or flash drive DISM.exe from the Windows ADK for Windows 10.

We go to the directory with DISM.exe and give the command:

Dism.exe /Capture-Image /ImageFile:D:\install.esd /CaptureDir:D:\ /Name:OrcinusCapture

Let me explain what is responsible for what:
Dism.exe launch the executable file,
/Capture-Image image creation command,
/ImageFile: D:\install.esd the file into which the image will be packaged,
/CaptureDir: D:\ the disk on which the installed OS is located,
/Name:OrcinusCapture name of the image, you can write whatever you want.

You can save the image to the disk from which the image is made. Or immediately copy it to a bootable USB flash drive. This is not important.

That's it, now you need to copy the resulting ESD image to a bootable USB flash drive and you have your own distribution ready for installation.

As a rule, those insider builds of Windows 10 that can be downloaded from torrents and other free sources are distributed in the format ESD, however, ESD is not so much a format as a software distribution technology. Essentially the file ESD this is the same archive as ISO, but it cannot be used to record and install an operating system with DVD or flash drives.

The ESD file must be converted to ISO before burning to portable media. For these purposes, you can use decryption kits, usually supplied with Windows distributions, but it is much more convenient to convert ESD to ISO using a utility developed by a programmer Artyom Kononenko.

The utility has a simple and pleasant-looking interface with support for the Russian language, does not require installation, and does not contain built-in advertising. It is distributed completely free of charge. The main features of ESD Decrypte include creating an ISO image from an ESD file with a standard install.wim, Creation ISO-image with compressed install.esd, creating a standard file install.wim and compressed install.esd.

The program also supports automatic check for availability new version, Creation backup copy ESD file, obtaining detailed information about the ESD image (index, language, release, architecture, etc.) and generating hash sums md5 And sha1 for ISO images. In the utility settings you can select a language - English, Russian and Ukrainian are available.

Using ESD Decrypte is extremely simple. The file selection field indicates the path to the source ESD image, and in the directory selection field - the path to the folder in which it will be saved ISO image. Pressing a button "Convert" starts the conversion process, the progress of which will be shown at the bottom of the utility window. On average, conversion time takes about half an hour, and it all depends on the performance of the computer. The ESD Decrypte ISO file is saved with the esd prefix, which needs to be removed, leaving only the extension ISO .

What is a folder ESD on Windows 10?

What is a folder ESD on Windows 10? What happens if I delete 2.5 GB of storage containing a folder? Will this affect my Windows?

Answer

Are you in the Windows 10 Preview Insiders Program? If yes, then this file may be useful.

ESD is designed to deliver electronic software. Microsoft uses it to deliver OS installation files to a computer from an Internet connection. This compressed file. It can be converted to an ISO file. Windows users can use ISO files downloaded to DVD/USB for OS installation.

I just upgraded to Windows 8

I just upgraded to Windows 8. Now I want to clean disk space, that is, get rid of windows.old using the disk cleanup utility, however I get the option of deleting ESD files to install windows, which will clean up another 3 gigs!

Now the question is should I remove them or not?

Answer

Disclaimer. Before you use Disk Cleanup, make sure all your files and settings are in Windows 8 where you expect them to be. Deleting the Windows.old folder cannot be undone.

We hope the above information is useful. If you have any questions, please get back to us, we will be happy to help you.

While cleaning, I accidentally deleted ESD files.

What are these files used for?
Should be pretty big file since I now have about 3GB of disk space.

Answer

When your Windows 10 is updated to the new build with using Microsoft Windows Update, Microsoft will choose to use electronic delivery of the software to send you Install.esd, necessary to update your current Windows builds 10. Likewise, if you manually download the ISO from Microsoft, then use your Media Creation Tool, you will end up with an Install.esd file in the folder Sources, which he creates.

IN Windows file 10. Install.esd contained standard file Install.wim, necessary for installation in a compressed format (in simple terms, like Install.wim was ZIPPED, but with a much higher compression algorithm).

If you are interested .wim is not suitable for Windows Image is something you'll see mentioned a lot when people discuss using Microsoft utilities Deployment Image Servicing and Management DISM to restore them Windows image when it became damaged.

I'm not sure which ESD you actually removed. When you upgrade, you get a new build as well as a Windows.old folder that can be used to revert to the original build if things don't go so well. If you deleted the Install.esd file inside Windows.old, it's not ideal, but it's not the end of the world since this folder is designed to self-destruct after 30 days, which is good considering its huge 3+ gigabyte data size, or if you're like me closer to 16 gigabytes

Also during installation, two hidden system folders are created in the root directory (usually C:\ for most users). They also contain ESD files.

You can always download whatever build you just updated from Microsoft if you want to install Install.esd again.

What is this ESD folder in C: and can I delete it?

After getting windows 10 (from 8.1) this folder appeared. It's 3 GB in size and if I don't need it I delete it

Do I need it? Or is it important?

Answer

It looks like you can use it to create a recovery disk or a full installation disk, and you can probably use it to repair selective OS bits if they ever get corrupted. You're probably fine with this as long as you don't want these things to be higher.

Running Disk Cleanup will probably remove it for you.