custom shell and DHCP (boot ordering?)

  • Thread starter Thread starter lsmithmier
  • Start date Start date
L

lsmithmier

Hello,
First time poster, so please be gentle. I have built a custom shell for an
XPe installation and I am having problems with network access. To be
specific, I am wanting to (eventually) boot remotely, get an IP address via
DHCP, and have my shell (or a program launched by it, both Dotnet written in
C#) open a socket for remote control.

I am currently trying to boot a local image and have my shell program work
as noted previously. What seem to happen is the program comes up prior to
the assignment of an IP, thus I can't connect remotely. I say _seems_
because I am almost sure there is something else going on that I just don't
Gronk yet. I feel this because I am also launching a form that I want to be
my background isn't showing. That is the reason I have a Shell launching a
second program, to try and remove myself from the issues of no network. Is
there some event that I should wait for prior to launching my program from
my shell? I have the two programs because I want to keep system control
separate from the main program.

Also, a much lesser question: can you do HORM _and_ remote boot with XPe
SP2?

Any help would be appreciated.



Larry at Smithmier dot Com
 
Did you create a shell component for your shell? Or is there another shell
like explorer also loading?

HOMR and remote boot are mutully exclusive. Remote Boot downloads an XPe
image from a server and loads the image into memory. There is assumed to be
no local storage with a Remote Boot. With HORM, a hibernate file is stored
on a hard drive and loaded into RAM upon boot.

Regards,

Sean Liming (eMVP)
Managing Director
SJJ Embedded Micro Solutions

www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
Author: Windows XP Embedded Advanced and Windows NT Embedded Step-by-Step
 
Larry,

In you application you can wait until IP address is retrived.
You can use IP Helper API to accomplish that. But it you think about DHCP only you can also try DHCP Client API:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dhcp/dhcp/dhcp_client_api.asp. Use DHCP CLient notification feature
(DhcpRegisterParamChange), just set OptionId to the IP address.

Ther eis currently no way to resume XP/XPe from a remote image. HORM and Remote Boot don't live together.
However, it is hard to belive someone can use to remotely load a hibernated image. Compared to the downloading time the time
advantage you gain by using the fast boting (resuming) image is almost nothing. Take a close look at the SDI feature of XPe and see
if this is what you really want.

KM
 
KM,

Thanks for the pointer to the information about the DHCP API. It looks like
what I need (*doh* of course it takes a while for DHCP to work, I feel a
little slow right now) so I will post code I use in the final solution for
others to gawk at. Thanks again for the assistance.

And yes, remote booting a HORM image does seem a bit foolish now that you
mention it. I was mainly thinking of being able to use the same image in
different situations, but again, foolish :-)

Thank you for your assistance. (and sorry for the delayed response, didn't
realize the postings were crossing and didn't read this one until today)

Larry
 
Back
Top