14 DAY TRIAL // A fix is available for download from Microsoft, designed to resolve an issue in which the boot.wim file of the company’s Windows OS for the high performance computing market, grows to what the software giant has called an excessive size. According to Microsoft, customers have reported problems with the boot.win starting to fatten up after the deployment of Service Pack 1 on top of HPC Pack 2008. In this regard, the fix is designed to integrate exclusively with HPC Pack 2008 Service Pack 1.
“After installing HPC Pack 2008 Service Pack 1 the "boot.wim" file on the headnode may slowly grow to an excessive size. Apply this update to the headnode to prevent this issue from occurring,” Microsoft explained. Microsoft offered little details about the cause of the issue and although the company is pointing users to a KB article, the specific resource has yet to go live on Microsoft Support. Undoubtedly though, it won’t be long until KB978570 is made available, and customers need only check back from time to time.
While the fix is designed to stop the growth of boot.wim files for HPC Pack 2008 Service Pack 1 without any additional intervention from users, there are also cases in which customers will need to get their hands dirty. According to Microsoft, this will happen in the eventuality that the "boot.wim" file has already jumped over the 200 megabytes mark. Boot.wim can be found in the �P_HOME%\data\ directory.
In case Boot.wim is indeed oversized beyond 200 MB, “the following additional steps are necessary: 1) Locate the media, or file share, that you used to capture the deployment image 2) Copy the boot.wim file from the original location, and replace the boot.wim file located in �P_HOME%\data\... 3) Open the HPC Cluster Manager 4) On the 'Configuration' tab, select the 'Configure your network' To-do List entry 5) Change your network topology (to something other than what you actually have, such as 'public only') and complete the wizard. 6) Select the 'Configure your network' entry, and set your network topology back to the appropriate selection and complete the wizard. 7) Your boot.wim file will now be repaired. Ensure that you have applied this update so that it does not grow excessively again,” Microsoft stated.