Out of Office Hours

As I do a lot of bare metal deployments, I routinely download the latest Windows 11 ISO from https://my.visualstudio.com (subscription required, you can also get them from https://admin.microsoft.com with other subscriptions). And it never fails, they keep getting bigger. Look at the five that I have on hand:

All of these are “Hudson Valley” releases, starting with 24H2 from November 2024 and working up to 25H2 from July 2026 (this month). And since Windows 11 26H2 is going to be an enablement package (just like 25H2), this is likely just going to keep growing for the next 15 months or so, until Windows 11 27H2 comes out (although that might be wishful thinking too).

Let’s compare from 2024-11 to 2026-07 just to see the difference.

So there are almost 6,000 new folders and over 20,000 new files added in that period of time.

We’re looking at 10 different images in both INSTALL.WIM files (in the ISO), so you might think “what if I just export the one I want, index 3 for Windows 11 Enterprise”? That helps some, but it still shows a big difference, with the 2024-11 exported WIM at 5.1GB and the 2026-07 exported WIM at 7.4GB.

So is there anything you can do about that? Not really. Trying to remove things and then capture a new image will result in a bigger image, not a smaller one (I’ve tried). The one thing that would work is using solid compression, i.e. an ESD file like what is provided via Windows Update. That would shrink the image by over a gigabyte, so it would be right around 6GB. But you then need a deployment tool (e.g. DeployR) that is able to easily deploy such an image.

The only thing we can hope for is Microsoft creating a more modular OS that installs less by default, with optional components that can be downloaded and installed as needed. (It’s not like that hasn’t been done before, e.g. .NET Framework and RSAT, language packs, etc. — the technology exists.)

And please, give up on using 64GB drives with Windows 11 (even though Microsoft says that is the minimum system requirement). At this rate, you’re going to need it just for the OS…