embedded XP tolerence to powerdowns without a clean shutdown

[roger edwards]

Hello,

Has anybody got any experience or can point me in the right direction as to
how solid embedded XP is when the PC it is running on is simply turned off,
without time for the shutdown process to be started / completed? For
instance does the process leave loads of temporary files around which will
need deleting (to prevent a flash disk filling up)? Or file corruptions,
etc?

Are there any standard techniques for cleaning / repairing the system after
such an event?

Many thanks
Roger

 

[Heidi]

This is what the Enhanced Write Filter is for - it
prevents changes to any volumes you want protected, unless
you choose to write those changes. Therefore, if your
system reboots unexpectedly, no changes have actually been
made.
My system is a good example of this - the boot partition
is protected, and it also has a small unprotected
partition where the config and setup files reside. Changes
to the operation of the unit are made in these config
files, but no matter what is changed on the boot volume
once the unit is rebooted everything is back as it should
be.

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

Hi Roger,

It is very stable if you use EWF feautre. It will prevent all write accesses
if configured.

Search this group or read doc on EWF.


Best regards,
Slobodan

 

[Doug Hoeffel]

Yes, the EWF does protect partitions from corruptions.

I have a system based on XPe SP1 with the RAM-based EWF protecting the boot
partition on a HD. I have been field beta testing 15 units since early May.
The results are good... no corruptions on the boot partition but I have seen
corruptions on my 2 other partitions not protected by EWF but this is
another problem. Could be the HD, the IDE controller, or the combination?
My work-around was to tweak the registry to look for the dirty bit on all
partitions except the boot C: partition at boot-up, i.e. correctly set the
BootExecute registry key. This way, chkdsk atleast can run and try to
correct the problem before it gets to be fatal. This has also been proven
in beta testing.

HTH... Doug

 

[Georges Berenger]

Yes, the EWF does protect partitions from corruptions.

I have a system based on XPe SP1 with the RAM-based EWF protecting the boot
partition on a HD. I have been field beta testing 15 units since early May.
The results are good... no corruptions on the boot partition but I have seen
corruptions on my 2 other partitions not protected by EWF but this is
another problem. Could be the HD, the IDE controller, or the combination?
My work-around was to tweak the registry to look for the dirty bit on all
partitions except the boot C: partition at boot-up, i.e. correctly set the
BootExecute registry key. This way, chkdsk atleast can run and try to
correct the problem before it gets to be fatal. This has also been proven
in beta testing.

How do you do that? I thought it was automatic...
How do you need to configure/do to get chkdisk be run on every disk if
necessary are boot time?

thanks!
-georges

 

[Doug Hoeffel]

Well, maybe I'm missing something, but when I built my OS image the
following reg key
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session
Manager\BootExecute" is blank when it should be "autocheck autochk *".
Then, if you do a "chkntfs C: /X" from the cmd prompt this sets the
BootExecute key so that chkdsk runs if the dirty bit is set on all
partitions except the boot C: partition which is protected by the EWF.

HTH... Doug

 

[Simon Le Comte]

Hi Roger

From what I seen as I work with Wyse I have not encouted
any issues on the falsh space filling up, our wrtie
filter protects this happening by cacheing systems Idle
rights to ram and then on log out or shutdown nothing has
changed. As far as temp file etc we push them to a RAM
drive as well so that things like temp internet files are
not stored on the device.

Cheers for Down under!

Simon

 

[roger edwards]

Many thanks to all those who replied to my posting. We'll put the EWF in
place.

Cheers
Roger