Greetings,
This is a very generic question, however I'd be interested in hearing some
suggestions from multiple parties.

I'd like to create an OS that is resistant to corruption from a power
off/on.

At this point, I use Sandisk Extreme III cards (which seem very fast and
stable) - I run bootprep and copy the OS image to the card... The FBA takes
about 15 minutes, and all is well.
If the card is being cloned, I'll fbreseal, copy the image to my hard drive,
and make copies at will, dependant on the application.

Our only problem has been if the units abrupty lose power, or if the end
user unplugs it from the wall without shutting Windows down properly. Most
of the time there isn't an issue; there are times, however, where we have to
wipe the card and install a fresh image.

Any suggestions would be sincerely appreciated.
--Bill

I would use EWF or FBWF enabled to protect from corruption and protect the
life of the flash.

Regards,

Sean Liming
www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
XP Embedded Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded Supplemental
Toolkit


"Bill" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:ek$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Greetings,
> This is a very generic question, however I'd be interested in hearing some
> suggestions from multiple parties.
>
> I'd like to create an OS that is resistant to corruption from a power
> off/on.
>
> At this point, I use Sandisk Extreme III cards (which seem very fast and
> stable) - I run bootprep and copy the OS image to the card... The FBA
> takes about 15 minutes, and all is well.
> If the card is being cloned, I'll fbreseal, copy the image to my hard
> drive, and make copies at will, dependant on the application.
>
> Our only problem has been if the units abrupty lose power, or if the end
> user unplugs it from the wall without shutting Windows down properly. Most
> of the time there isn't an issue; there are times, however, where we have
> to wipe the card and install a fresh image.
>
> Any suggestions would be sincerely appreciated.
> --Bill
>
>

Bill,

The below is what I recently posted in another thread in the newsgroup.
See how much is applicable to your system.



If you suspect the power can be interrupted for your target PC in the field and you don't have UPS or similar to work around that
then you might be interested in a few technologies XPe has built in. Read about those in the XPe documentation:

- EWF/FBWF - protecting the storage media with write filters will make it more reliable for the system to recover:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms912906.aspx, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa940926.aspx.

- Headless support - this is what you'll definitely need since no console devices are attached to or supported by your hardware:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms932872.aspx.

- Don't include Safe Mode and Dr. Watson components in your image. (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms940820.aspx)

- Setup the system crash dump procedure to restart the PC automatically when a GPF occurs. Set the following reg.entry:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl],"AutoReboot"=dword:1

- Get rid of all [most of] system popups and message boxes that may get your system UI unintentionally locked:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/embedded/aa731206.aspx, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms933122.aspx.

- It often makes a sense to create your own custom shell for our target XPe OS where you can control the UI behavior (to make it
more headless appropriate) and get rid of Explorer Shell that is not really headless friendly:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms913692.aspx.

--
=========
Regards,
KM

> Greetings,
> This is a very generic question, however I'd be interested in hearing some suggestions from multiple parties.
>
> I'd like to create an OS that is resistant to corruption from a power off/on.
>
> At this point, I use Sandisk Extreme III cards (which seem very fast and stable) - I run bootprep and copy the OS image to the
> card... The FBA takes about 15 minutes, and all is well.
> If the card is being cloned, I'll fbreseal, copy the image to my hard drive, and make copies at will, dependant on the
> application.
>
> Our only problem has been if the units abrupty lose power, or if the end user unplugs it from the wall without shutting Windows
> down properly. Most of the time there isn't an issue; there are times, however, where we have to wipe the card and install a fresh
> image.
>
> Any suggestions would be sincerely appreciated.
> --Bill
>
>