FBA keeps booting (not the wrong-drive mistake)

[Sven Meirsman]

Hi,
I'm having trouble with an image I created. The FBA runs smoothly, then it
states 'resetting setup flags' and reboots. From here it's in a loop :
Resetting setup flags, boot, ...
These are the specs:
- configured EWF
- boot-image on HD
- using a RAM-overlay

part of FBA log:
1:12:04 AM - [OcTerminate] Finished
1:12:04 AM - [FBALaunch] C:\WINDOWS\FBA\FBAOC.EXE (ExitCode: 0x0)
1:12:04 AM - [CallEntryPointThread] C:\WINDOWS\FBA\FBALIB.DLL,
FBALaunchOCM
1:12:04 AM - [FBASetProgressText] Installing Components...
1:12:06 AM - [FBALaunch] C:\WINDOWS\system32\regsvr32.exe /s /i
C:\WINDOWS\system32\swprv.dll (ExitCode: 0x0)
1:12:07 AM - [FBALaunch] C:\WINDOWS\system32\regsvr32.exe /s /i
C:\WINDOWS\system32\eventcls.dll (ExitCode: 0x0)
1:12:07 AM - [CallEntryPointThread] C:\WINDOWS\FBA\FBAREG.DLL,
FBAMigrateRegistryKeys
1:12:07 AM - [FBAChangeDisplaySettings] Settings: [1280, 1024, 32, 85]
1:12:07 AM - [FBAChangeDisplaySettings] Settings not found!
1:12:07 AM - [CallEntryPointThread] C:\WINDOWS\FBA\FBALIB.DLL,
FBAChangeDisplaySettings
1:12:07 AM - [FBAChangeDisplaySettings] Settings: [1280, 1024, 32, 85]
1:12:07 AM - [FBAChangeDisplaySettings] Settings not found!
1:12:07 AM - [CallEntryPointThread] C:\WINDOWS\FBA\FBALIB.DLL,
FBAChangeDisplaySettings
1:12:07 AM - [FBASetProgressText] Resetting Setup Flag...
1:12:07 AM - [FBARemoveRestart] Updated BootExecute!
1:12:07 AM - [CallEntryPointThread] C:\WINDOWS\FBA\FBALIB.DLL,
FBAResetSetup
1:12:07 AM - [FBASetProgressText] Replacing System Hives...
1:12:07 AM - [FBASetProgressText] Resetting Setup Flag...
1:12:12 AM - [FBAFlushFilesToDisk] FlushFileBuffers(C:\) succeeded!
1:12:12 AM - [FBADoReboot] Sleeping...
1:12:22 AM - [FBADoReboot] Exiting process...

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Sven,

Just to be on safe side, although you said that this is not a problem.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/embedded/community/tips/xp/reboots.asp

Second option is that EWF somehow is enabled and running during the FBA
process.
This would prevent registry changes done during FBA to be saved to disk.

Or there is less possibly some other explanation.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Sven Meirsman]

Slobodan,

thx for the fast response!

Just to be on safe side, although you said that this is not a problem.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/embedded/community/tips/xp/reboots.asp

Well, I'm 100% sure... Everything worked with the same setup until I added
the 'Microsoft ACPI-compliant System' component to the image. I just deleted
this component again to double-check if it really is this component that is
bugging me. I'll be back in half an hour to tell you if the image worked
without that component.

Second option is that EWF somehow is enabled and running during the FBA
process.
This would prevent registry changes done during FBA to be saved to disk.

Well, as stated above, this is not the case either, I think.

Or there is less possibly some other explanation.

Amaze me, pls.

regards,
Sven

 

[Sven Meirsman]

Slobodan,

After some more investigation, I stumbled onto
http://www.xpefiles.com/a_commentS.cfm?fileid=23 where I think my problem is
beeing explained. I removed the component that I thaught was the one that
caused the trouble, but I still couldn't start. I'm gonna try and remove
that shitty piece of zero-size-partition of my test drive and get back with
the results.

regards,
Sven

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

And you can make your image in a way that will never again create this
partition.

Find my doc file on xpefiles called ramewf.zip for more information.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Sven Meirsman]

Slobodan,

HELP! I'm afraid i can't remove that stupid small partition. I tried using
PartitionMagic, it didn't do the trick. I don't have any NT machines here,
how can I delete this partition?

Sven

 

[KM]

Sven,

diskpart.exe?
(select partition, delete partition)

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Try etprep.exe from XPe tools.

Or diskpart.exe from Windows XP.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

I don't have any NT machines here, how can I delete this partition?
Sorry, you can start tools I mentioned from first XPe CD that is bootable.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Sven Meirsman]

Ok, partition gone... and off we go. Thanks for the wonderful help, it
turned out to be exactly that problem. Now I'm going to bed... It's 5 in the
morning pffft...

btw, I'm trying to get hibernation support into my image, what components do
I need for that?

best regards,
Sven

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

We are in the same time zone GMT +1

Component "ACPI xxx PC" Settings "Enable hibernation support"
Component "Disk Dump Drivers"

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Sven Meirsman]

We are in the same time zone GMT +1
Are you always working that late? ;-) Where you from? Yugoslavia? (.yu in
your email)

Component "ACPI xxx PC" Settings "Enable hibernation support"

already added

Component "Disk Dump Drivers"

That's the one... didn't had a clue...

thx!

 

[Sven Meirsman]

Component "Disk Dump Drivers"
And again i'm here... Where can I find this one? It's not in my TD.

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Lower your visibility in Target Designer to 200.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Are you always working that late?
I'm not working always till 5. But usually I am working till 1 or 2 AM.
Very little phone distraction in late hours.

Where you from? Yugoslavia?

Former Yugoslavia. Currently *it* is called "Serbia and Montenegro".

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Sven Meirsman]

Lower your visibility in Target Designer to 200.
I found it myself... beeing a newbie isn't exactly what I'm used to (while
having the MCSD certificate and MCAD charter member certificate) ;-)

So I managed to do al these things.
I have:
-a ACPI Multiprocessor PC component (P4 3Ghz with hyperthreading)
- Hibernation support is checked
- Disk Dump Drivers added
- I even have the Power Properties item in the Control Panel of my XPE.

Strange, the Power Properties dialog box still does not have a
hibernation-tabpage on it like in my development environment (same machine,
Xp pro) i'll have to investigate some more I guess.

How can you found out what components you need to install in order to have
the functionality you want? Hardware device drivers are rather
straight-forward. Make a sld from it, import in the component mgr. and let's
get rollin'... But how about things like hibernation, audio and video
codecs, adding property pages for desktop, ... I don't think I can always
ask it in here and depend on you, Slobodan... ;-)

I'm trying to get the "Windows Embedded Xp step by step" book
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0929392736/002-5679470-447681
6?v=glance) are u familiar with this work, and is it worth the money?
Because it looks like it's the only book out there about XPE.

regards,
Sven

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Sven,

You can try to use xpepm -standby or some other way to test your stand by
support.
If stand by does not work, then hibernate won't work also.

You will need all drivers to support stand by and hibernation, if only one
driver does not support it then you won't be able to suspend or hibernate
your device.

First check if your video driver supports hibernation.

How can you found out what components you need to install in order to have
the functionality you want?

Well if you know exactly what functionality your application requires.
Then you can add all required features to your XPe image to support them.
Search this NG for previous solutions on many subjects, also you must test
all features, since there are times that something is missing in registry,
etc.

Hardware device drivers are rather straight-forward.

In most cases it is even simpler than that.

But how about things like hibernation, audio and video codecs, adding

property pages for desktop,.....
audio and video codecs, you can find all non MS codecs that you need and
componentize them by yourself, little practice.

For books I don't know.
I'm using DDK and SDK documentations. It is enough for me to cover more than
90% of things related to Windows and XPe.

And of course you should always search this NG to try to find solutions. If
you can't then you should ask question.

If I don't know the answer or I'm not around, someone else will probably
give you the answer.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Heidi Linda eMVP]

Have you previously deployed to this drive?
If so, you may still have an EWF partition on the drive, set to active. This
will kick in and prevent changes being written to the drive, even during
FBA. Delete the partition and all should be well.

 

[Sven Meirsman]

Strange, the Power Properties dialog box still does not have a

hibernation-tabpage on it like in my development environment (same machine,
Xp pro) i'll have to investigate some more I guess.

Ok, this is what I found out:
I have:
- a ACPI multiprocessor PC, hibernation enabled
- a 700 Mb HD partition with EWF enabled. (RAM overlay)
- 1Gb RAM installed in my machine.
- EWF RAM overlay of 917504kb (896Mb)
- 128 Mb working RAM left (or did I misunderstand this and is the 896 also
used for 'working memory'?)

The reason why this setup did not allow me to hibernate is actually very
easy... There's just not enough space on the HD partition... duh!
What I was thinking was that the hibernation thingy would only save the
'working memory' to hd. (in my case 128Mb ram, I assumed) My image is
approx. 120 MB ram, so I had enough left for 128Mb hibernation data. But not
for 1 Gb hibernation data.
After I found out this, it seams that the EWF RAM overlay is also saved to
the hibernation file, and restored after powering up the machine again.
Isn't there a possibility of commiting the changes to the HD partition
before hibernating and then only hibernating the 'working memory'?

An other option that I am considering is (if it is possible) to not use EWF
and limit my RAM memory usage. (I don't prefer of actually taking the RAM
out of the machine). Maybe this limitation is possible by including a RAM
disk feature, that just creates a chunk of 896 MB ram disk. (After all, this
would just be needed on the development machine)

regards,
Sven

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hibernation file is always created to store all memory uncompressed.

Although is stores compressed memory data of only used memory.

1GB RAM = 1 GB Hiber File (sorry, there could be possible to make some hack,
but it would be too hard to do it)

RAM EWF with XPe that is properly configured won't consume more than a few
MB.

Regards,
Slobodan