Running FBA on HD instead of CF ?

[AS]

Hi,

I have XPe on my target machine with HD and CF... The HD has 2 partitions,
one with regular XP (Drive C and other with XPe (Drive D...
I want to run FBA on the HD instead of the CF. So I copy my image to the HD
drive D: and configure my Target Designer, to boot from C: but have the
"Windows" and "Program Files" folders in drive D:. The Post-FBA image runs
fine on the HD, but how do I get this to copy and boot from the CF, which
would be Drive C: now that the HD is removed...??? Is there a way (other
than re-partition my HD to have XPe to be C: drive and XP Pro. to be D:
drive) to boot from the CF using it as drive C:\ and configure the Target
designer still as drive D:

Thanks,
Regards

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/community/tips/xp/rtpartin/default.aspx

Also read all other tips from tip page, you might find them useful.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Lasse]

Hi
I have solved this problem as:
I have XP Pro and XP Embedded on the same partition. C:

In TD settings I set directories to:
C:\XPE\Windows
C:\XPE\Program Files
C:\XPE\Documents and Settings
The result is that the entire XPE is located under C:\Xpe and does not conflict
with XP Pro. (except bootsector, Boot.ini and ntldr, they can be shared).

When it is moved to the CF (which becomes C: when the HD is removed), it
is still located under C:\Xpe

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Besides that your solution will create non-standard folder names....
You are using eval version of software on HDD partition size 2+GB. Am I
right?
And then you copy post FBA image to CF partition of 256 MB and it is
working.

What would happen if you have tried to copy registered version of XPe image
to CF partition of 256 MB.
Your image would probably crash since partition size would not match
original partition size set in TD.

You should also consider reading:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/community/tips/xp/rtpartin/default.aspx

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Lasse]

Hi
My harddisk is something like 30 GB.
On my CF I have a 60 MByte partition for XPE.
I am using compressed NTFS, EWF RAM, Minlogon, network, my own shell.

I dont't care about the non-standard names. Why should I ?
Everything seems to work fine.

When I do my copying, it is file copying, not some kind of
copy image of partition.

I don't understand when you say:
"Your image would probably crash since partition size would not match
original partition size set in TD."

I thougt these settings were mainly to help TD to estimate disk size.
I have never cared to set correct values.

Why is the size setting important.
Is XPE checking size for licensing purposes ? or what.

Note: mostly I do it the reversed way
- FBA on CF
- Boot on XP Pro, copy my XPE files to harddisk - C:\XPE

Is is different to do it this way.

I am getting a bit worried. Have I missed something important here.

Lasse

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Don't be worried, you are not in danger.

But registered XPe image use value set for partition size in TD as some
weird license check. So it would probably fail when partition size changes.

Also for some XPe images not based on minlogon and custom shell, users would
expect (if they can access disk) to see OS folders in root.

Regards,
Slobodan