[ANSWERED] Problems integrating drivers after reducing image

I successfully reduced my win7 home to <3 GB installed on disk, but if I try to integrate drivers in the image the size of installed system grows to 18-19 GB. I tried Winreducer, WinToolkit, DISM with same results.
Can anyone understand why?
Because if I install drivers normally in system I go from 3 to 5-6 GB, not 18!

i once got a simular problem, for me the audio driver (which was like 200mb) was integrated like 100 times.

i dont know why that happend but after some time it didnt happen again

I think it's winsxs related problem. I noticed this since I removed the cache.

Hello,

With dism if you use "/recursive" arguments this will add all inf files it finds ...

So, if a manufacturer have one inf file for each hardware he got in the driver package (I experienced this with nvidia display drivers once), so one driver will be added in your iso for each hardware .... In fact if you have 25 inf in the manufacturer driver, dism will install 25 times the same drivers : this is why your ISO hugely grows !

I'm aware of this limitation so I will improve the drivers part of WinReducer in the future !

Hi Winter, the problem is not how many drivers you install...
I have installed all Nvidia, Creative and Realtek drivers and Windows directory went from 3GB to 6GB.
The problem is when the drivers are integrated in the wim file (Windows directory goes to 18-19GB! Three times prior size, adding the same drivers).
This is not a WinReducer bug, but it's 99% related to winsxs removal.
If you try, look at the size of C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository folder...
I don't know if it can be solved, but surely I prefer to remove the cache and manually install drivers.

Hey,

Yes, this is exactly what I'm saying ...

Let me explain more with a single Nvidia driver as example : when you integrate only this specific nvidia driver with Dism you need to extract the nvidia driver content to a folder, right ?
Then you use dism with recursive switch to point to this extracted folder, am i wrong ?
So, if you have a look in the nvidia driver extracted folder, then you will see many inf files which will be integrated one by one by dism.
--> this is why your C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository folder will grow, because it keep one entire driver for each inf files !

==> The only solution to avoid this, is to point to the unique specific inf driver file with dism, or install the driver using the normal executable nvidia driver file, which will detect the unique specific driver for your hardware.

Have you tried to use the normal executable nvidia driver file procedure, to see if there is difference ?

Ok I found the right driver (nv_dispi); Nvidia drivers are different from AMD ones, they're all classified as display drivers; it is not so straightforward to understand which one to install. Thanks.

Yes, you are right this far from being easy ...