Worth swiching from XPE SP1 to SP2?

[RussR]

We are a licensed OEM embedded developer and I recently accquired XPE SP2,
but I have not installed it as of yet. Before I do so, is it worth
switching from SP1 to SP2? Will my images built with SP1 still work if I
load them in TD?

Thanks

 

[Matt Kellner \(MS\)]

Hi Russ. Yes, you can still load and build images from SP1 with the SP2
component database update installed. When you load the configuration into
Target Designer, it will tell you that the configuration can be upgraded,
but this is not a required step. If you do choose to upgrade your
configuration to SP2, I recommend saving it as a new .SLX file instead of
overwriting your old one, so that you can revert to the SP1 configuration if
the new config doesn't work properly.

There are many new features, fixes and security updates in SP2, including
the new Windows Firewall components. In addition, the SP2 database has some
new macro components (such as El Torito CD Support) that make some tasks
easier when creating your runtime configurations. I would recommend
upgrading, but as always, it's your call. =)

Hope this helps!

--
Matt Kellner ([email protected])
STE, Windows Embedded Group

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
===============================

 

[RussR]

Has SP2 fixed some of the components in TD such as the User Interface Core?
In my SP1 version, nothing that I set in User Interface Core actually works
and I had to use workarounds by hacking the registry.

Are there any downsides to upgrading to SP2 xpe?

 

[Matt Kellner \(MS\)]

That's odd. The UI Core component should have been working properly in SP1,
unless you were using something other than the Explorer Shell. It's
possible that you had another component that was overriding settings from
the UI Core component, but I would not be able to tell you immediately which
components would do that.

Upgrading to XPe SP2: About the only real downside I'm aware of is that in
some cases, you may need to recreate your image from scratch in order to
keep your footprint down. This is because the process of upgrading from SP1
to SP2 components doesn't always clean out obsolete components, and
inter-component dependencies may have changed in SP2. Also, some custom
components (especially components that insert or modify registry data for
device drivers, security information, etc.) will need to be updated to work
with SP2, as the registry structure for some of the main OS components
(particularly the security subsystem) has changed.

Other than that, there should be no major downsides.

--
Matt Kellner ([email protected])
STE, Windows Embedded Group

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
===============================

 

[Leonid]

I have another question regarding the migration from SP1 to SP2.
Our current system is running Sp1. But my boss heard that MS will
discontinue security updates support for SP1 and he push me to upgrade our
image to SP2 level.
My question:
Is it true about stopping security updates support for SP1 or MS will
continue to support SP1 and SP2 in parallel for XP Embedded?

Thanks
Leonid

 

[Matt Kellner \(MS\)]

Hi Leonid. There are no official plans at this time to drop support for
SP1 - you can expect SP1 support to continue for the time being until an
official announcement is made by Microsoft stating otherwise.

We still recommend that you upgrade to SP2 for the reasons mentioned below -
mainly for the added security features and fixes that are not present or
supported in SP1. (For example, while we will continue to send out security
fixes for SP1, the Windows Firewall in SP2 will not be "backported" to SP1.)

--
Matt Kellner ([email protected])
STE, Windows Embedded Group

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
===============================