XPe beginner needs help

[frag]

Hi,

I'm just beginning with XPe, have downloaded the trial software,
installed it all fine.

I'm trying to get a bootable CD just including the bare essentials:-

Create new project in Target Designer:-

In Target Device Settings set "Boot partition size" to 250MB, leave
everything else as is.
Add WinLogon Sample Macro
Add El Torito CD Support

In WinLogon Settings deselect NT Loader, NTFS, NTFS Format.

Let TD resolve dependancies.

In Enhanced Write Filter settings deselect "Start EWF Enabled"

In User Interface Code select "Show Run on Start Menu"

Built Target Image. No problem, builds fine.


Now I'm rather confused what the normal procedure is from here on.

I know I copy the image files to an active/bootable (same thing?)
partition on a hard drive, use hd2iso to create an ISO image, burn that
to a CD-R, boot the hard drive, let FBA do its thing, and then burn the
modified files from the bootable partition to another CD-R which will
be the final bootable CD-R (?)


How do people have their machines configured so they can do this?

Do you have an extra hard drive that you use to create the C: partition
on, then disable your main HDD to get this extra HDD to boot so FBA can
run?

Do you have an external USB HDD?

Do you have an extra partition on your main HDD with an XP multi boot
menu?

I've tried the second and third with no joy.

I have an external USB2 HDD, I've wiped it, created a primary 250MB
partition, FAT32, copied the image files to that, make an ISO from
that, burn it to CD, but my computer won't boot from a USB HDD so I
can't run FBA that way.

I've also tried having my main HDD set up so:-
Partition 1 'C:\' : primary 30GB, main windows XP bootable partition
Partition 2 'D:\' : primary 250MB XPe partition.
<partition 3 : rest of drive, working data>

Copy all the image files to 'D:\', edit C:\boot.ini so it will dual
boot, make ISO from D:\, burn to CD-R, reboot, choose XPe to boot, FBA
runs very quickly and then reboots and I get a 9A license error.

If I change the Target Designer main settings (Target Device Settings)
so everything is on the D: drive and re build, re copy, re boot, FBA
does actually run properly, but the CD I make from the new ISO (and the
old pre-FBA'd ISO) does not boot, giving me "Disc Error".

I've also tried booting the USB HDD on a couple of other machines, but
oddly it seems to lock them up at the BIOS stage, or takes ages and
them comes up with a STOP 7B screen.

Can anyone explain how you've got your hardware (hdds, computer(s)) set
up to let you do this FBA thing easily, and also the exact steps and
config I would use to get a bootable CD image?



Thanks


Richard

 

[Mike Warren]

Hi Richard,

I'm trying to get a bootable CD just including the bare essentials:-

How do people have their machines configured so they can do this?

Do you have an extra hard drive that you use to create the C:
partition on, then disable your main HDD to get this extra HDD to
boot so FBA can run?

I use an old hard drive (10GB) and connect it to my dev machine
using a USB HDD adaptor. This is my procedure:

1/ Create a single FAT32 partition on the drive of the size I want my
CD using Disk Management. In this case it is 90MB (My image is 60MB).
Mark the partition active. Make sure the rest of the drive is unpartitioned.

2/ Copy the image created by Target Designer to this partition.

3/ Use hd2iso.exe to create an iso on my dev machine.

4/ Burn the iso to a CD.

5/ Connect the hard drive to the target as primary master.

6/ Insert CD from step 4 in target.

7/ Disable "boot from CD" in the BIOS of target.

8/ Boot target and let FBA run. The CD will be accessed during
PNP phase of FBA. Target will reboot twice and come up with
the shell. Run ewfmgr c: and make sure EWF is disabled.

9/ Run etprp /all. The target will start to reboot. Pull the power
before it gets a chance to reboot.

10/ Move the hard drive back to the dev machine.

11/ Use hd2iso.exe to create the final iso on my dev machine.

12/ Burn to CD using Nero.

-Mike

 

[frag]

Mike Warren scribbled:

Hi Richard,



I use an old hard drive (10GB) and connect it to my dev machine
using a USB HDD adaptor. This is my procedure:

<snip assistance>

Thankyou very much Mike, I'll try that and see what happens.

I was hoping I could use my dev machine to do it "all on one" but it
looks like thats not possible.

I gather that the PnP part of FBA needs to execute on the correct
target, otherwise it'll find the wrong hardware?

At the moment I'm playing around with the Trial/Eval version to see if
its possible to do what we want to do, it looks like I'll have to get
my boss to order a nice EPIC CPU board so I can test it out properly.

Regarding the speed issue, we're considering all in one CPU boards with
no moving parts for reliability (harsh environments), but the ones I've
seen without a CPU fan seem to max out at about 500MHz processor speed.
I'm hoping that if I can prune the XPe image down as much as possible
our app will still run at a reasonable speed. It runs fine on AMD
Sempron 2.4s now, but they're a lot faster than a 500MHz chip!


Also is there a guide to integrating MSDE into the XPe image anywhere?

And am I correct in thinking that MSXML is included in the Target
Designer database? (we use V6.0)

Also is software compiled from VS V6.0, .NET and 2005 fine to run on
XPe? We've just moved over to VS 2005 (in a failed attempt to use
SourceSafe over HTTP!), our app is written in VC++. If anything I would
guess its just a matter of making sure the needed DLLs are there.





Cheers,

Richard Wood

 

[Sean Liming \(eMVP\)]

Another solution is to use Remote Recover, but it is a little expensive.

Regards,

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