Copy OEM folder contents to HD before "fake setup"? (Page 2 of 3)

how much larger are the packs with some smaller dictionary sizes

who wants to do some speed tests -
repack some DriverPacks useing your favorite number as the dictionary size and let us know...

if we could also report the ram installed on the target machine(s) and basic pack/size info.

This is all very helpful ... Thanks guys..

PS it is probably a good idea to think of 512 as a minimum but still supported value for ram

if they have 256 meg of ram and complain about performace... well... I will disscuss it with them then ...

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Are you really sure about that?

My figures come from what the 7-Zip GUI displays when you change compression modes, I always took those figures as accurate (also complies with personal experience when RAM required to compress exceeds system RAM so will will slow down considerably due to swapping, as you've also pointed out correctly).

If the packs really took that much to decompress, I would have certainly noted on my system, as I often unpack them to fiddle around with them.
My system only sports 1 GB of RAM, of which ~700 MB is in constant use already.
With a HDD that loud as mine (gonna exchange it soon anyhow) I definately notice when excessive swapping takes place
That has not been the case with decompressing any of the packs, yet.

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OK, fair enough.  So what would be the ideal dictionary size?  What's the standard XP PC come with?  256Mb?  512MB?
I'm willing to repack and upload, but over the holidays I just don't have the time to do extensive testing.
Once we come up with a figure, this needs to get documented in the DriverPacks team threads.

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i will reiterate... desktop testing is a fair place to start... but will not yield any truely useful info.

chipset drivers are not installed at PE and memory performance will likely take a hit without them.

winPE is the only valid feedback for this series of tests... (presetup.cmd)

It seems memory is loaded in relation to the dictionary size so i think half of 512...

that is multiple times the size of our largest pack...
it may be that specifiying a size larger than size of the largest pack is the point of diminishing return (meg per minute)

This is why you are each so important...
if four of you spend an hour on this it is like one of us spending four hours.
(quad core vs single core )

That is why each of you is the most valuable member of the team

Thanks to you all again!

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Dang, yes, I actually did...

We've already had numerous discussions about how splitting up the packs for the overall best.
The current method seemed the most logical to all of us because it splits HW by use, i.e., pack A has the most commonly updated cards (current ones), B all the business models (CAD etc) and C the legacy ones that are most likely never going to get updated driver ever again.
We figured, you may need only either of the packs really (but you can use all three, of course).
On old HW, you won't need A&B, on business PCs, you won't need A&C and on a gaming PC you won't need B&C.
Reason for this is if all drivers were to be placed into one pack, only a tiny update means you'll have to re-DL the whole bunch.
Some users are on a slower connection and we also don't want to have the server cap out (though unlikely).

You are of course more than welcome you repack the packs to your own liking.

Well, that's probably because there is no such single file of nearly that size (apart maybe from DriverPacks packs with huge wavetables...).

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Similar sequence of codes are in ATI`s  .sys, .dll files. The same is true for nVidia

Original 8.12 Graphic Packs occupates 62,014+97,314+84,327 = 243,655KB
but repacked ATI+nVidia+Others only 75,975+60,585+67,966 = 204,526KB (I use 64MB dictionary size insted of 1GB )

Last edited by magon (2008-12-28 04:57:11)

I don`t think that one DriverPack for all drivers is a good idea

IMHO a number of users integrate all the Packs like me and need to DL such a superfluous size DriverPacks (at least 240-200=40MB now)
Some can use DriverPacks for 1-2-3 mashines and don`t need ATI drivers (as a example) at all

May be it would be better to provide 2 different sets for Graphic DriverPacks on DL server (and look through DL statistic)
... at least while we have no xdelta files

After reading this thread I have a few points myself if I may.....

1. Would it be worth scrapping M1 all toghether and just use either M2 or M3? Since these are faster it makes more sense to me?

2. Helmi pointed out that many folk have a slow connection so I think it would be better to still compress the drivers as much as possible to keep down the amount of space they have. Plus many people also use WPI on their installs which can use a lot of room so the less space needed by drivers the better.

I use WPI myself and with that and all the driverpacks plus 3rd party ones I can still put it all on DVD5!

3. I agree that copying to HDD before decompression is miles better, could a little command be put in it to delete the archives packs after extraction just to keep things clean?

4. Keep all the packs as seperate ones then people can get the ones they want, and if they want all of them then they can download them all just like it already is. If it aint broke dont fix it kinda thing???

Just my pennies worth guys

Stoner.

At the end of the day as the saying goes "you cant please everybody".

To point 3 tho m8 yes it would be faster as for the other things it works and works well so why fix something if it aint broke kinda thing? However making improvements is always a good thing... ok im not making much sense here but I hope you know what I mean.

Only teh mass storage contains a full set of HWIDs so it will not work...
Even if we started adding them it would fail on older packs... perhaps not a big deal but...

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Well, it depends whether you refer to SAD or a normal Slipstream with DriverPacks BASE...
The focus of this thread is SlipStream so i will answer assuming that...

the short answer is: We don't install the drivers with method 2... windows setup.exe does it for us.

We simply put them where windows setup can find them just before Windows runs setup.exe on the machine as part of the normal installation process.

Basicaly we pause setup, expand the driver library by two gig and resume setup.

now that windows has a complete library to use during the install it wins (almost) every time.

Some drivers absolutely will not install without their personal setup.exe running...
We use the finisher to address that.
Most drivers therefore will not have a finisher entry (and therefore will not have an INI entry...
If a driver folder does have an entry in the packs INI then that driver/folder is a problem child ...

i hope i understood you correctly...

As far as reducing the size... i already wrote the code for that in the testing team forum...
you were/are there
It is resonable & feasable and likely that hwidstool code will appear as a sub option for each platform...

IE the Alpha of installbyhwidstool is already written
making it a new "Include" or Function is like adding a plugin...

Except for the GUI part... That part is always a mess to deal with...
It is some of the oldest parts that Wim wrote when he was 14,
and this was the first program that he ever wrote... God love him.

if you take a peak at the TO-DO list i updated yesterday you can get a fell for what i think is a priority ATM...
http://forum.driverpacks.net/viewtopic.php?id=71

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