Adding components in the field

[ShawnW]

Please excuse me if this has already been discussed here and just
point me to the link. I tried to search, but couldn't find anything,
but I might not be searching correctly.

We are looking to migrate our product line from a XP Home OS to XPe
OS. Our product are stand-alone devices with currently no internet
connectivity. We normally send out CD's that our customers use to
update their systems. These CD's will also contain add new 3rd party
software that the end users many install depending on what options
that choose.

I believe that updating the our software is fairly straight forward.
As long as we include the needed components to run the installer on
the original base and shut off HORM and EWF before the update install,
we should be all set. We will re-enable these when the update is
complete.

The tricker issue is how to add a XPe dependent feature if we need it
later. Lets say a new 3rd party application needs DirectX to run and
it wasn't included in the original build. How would we install both
the new application and theneeded components onto the remote
machines?

Thanks

Shawn

 

[Sean Liming \(eMVP\)]

The new Image Difference Engine is a good solution to help update XPe
systems in the field.

http://blogs.msdn.com/embedded/archive/2007/03/14/image-diff-how-does-it-work.aspx
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/embedded/aa731258.aspx

Regards,

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

 

[KM]

Shawn,

Another option, if the image footprint is not a big issue for your system since you've already been there with XP Home, you can
build a full blown XPe image with virtually all software components included at first place. Then no future dependency missing
issues.
Check out XPProEmulation image on www.xpefiles.com (FP2007 RTM version).