XPE from USB Key for Troubleshooting

[Guest]

I'm a complete newbie to using XPE and would like to create an XP image on a 1GB bootable USB to use when troubleshooting desktops and laptops that blue screen. I'd like to be able to load all our desktop and network tools onto it and use it as a method of getting data and the PC back up and running as fast as possible, without having to carry around a separate laptop as a loaner.

Is there any website or step-by-step guide to building an XPE image on a bootable USB key? I've downloaded the XPE Eval Kit, but is there anything else I need to build the image? The USB key in particular I'll be using is a Kingston 1GB Data Traveler 2.0

Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Steve Maiorca

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Steve,

If you have enough RAM of your devices then you should consider using RAM boot from SDI file that contains your post FBA XPe image.
This is the only thing that will work without too much troubles.

BTW: You will need too much time to do this. Unless you are planning to do this solution as fun or to sell it you should consider
giving up on XPe idea.

Regards,
Slobodan

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I'm a complete newbie to using XPE and would like to create an XP image on a 1GB bootable USB to use when troubleshooting desktops

and laptops that blue screen. I'd like to be able to load all our desktop and network tools onto it and use it as a method of
getting data and the PC back up and running as fast as possible, without having to carry around a separate laptop as a loaner.

Is there any website or step-by-step guide to building an XPE image on a bootable USB key? I've downloaded the XPE Eval Kit, but

is there anything else I need to build the image? The USB key in particular I'll be using is a Kingston 1GB Data Traveler 2.0.

 

[Guest]

Post FBA image? I've been trying to sift through the posts and get a general idea of how to do all this

In particular

What files do you need exactly to make it a bootable? NTLOADER, NTDETECT and BOOT.ini, or are there more things

What arc path do you use to point it to a RAMdisk or a USB drive

If I wanted it to work with multiple hardware platforms, would I have to integrate multiple targets? (i.e. Dell GX 270, Dell GX260, Dell GX1, etc.

What 3rd party sites would be good to check with on how to configure this

I think it would be helpful for us to use in our troubleshooting and I've been interested in tailoring XP for thin client needs. Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

 

[KM]

SM,

What files do you need exactly to make it a bootable? NTLOADER, NTDETECT and BOOT.ini, or are there more things?

Those files should be enough. (+SDI file, of course)

What arc path do you use to point it to a RAMdisk or a USB drive?

E.g.,

[operating systems]
ramdisk(0)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Embedded RAM Boot" /fastdetect /rdpath=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\yoursdifile.sdi
/rdimageoffset=4096

If I wanted it to work with multiple hardware platforms, would I have to integrate multiple targets? (i.e. Dell GX 270, Dell

GX260, Dell GX1, etc.)

This is a tough one. Assuming your got the same HAL for all the supported targets, check these two threads:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&[email protected]


http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=...%24a5KSEHA.2372%40TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl&rnum=1

What 3rd party sites would be good to check with on how to configure this?

I don't think there any 3rd party solutions. Only Google and particulary
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=microsoft.public.windowsxp.embedded may help you.

 

[Guest]

Ok, I'm pretty sure all of our clients are using the ACPI HAL. It's the one used on both our desktop and laptops. I have a series of driver cache directories for our desktops and laptops that our normal XP PRO images use to install devices. Is there a way to point this FBA to look in those directories to find those drivers

Also, how do you actually go about generating the SDI file

Hopefully I can get enough of this in my head to stop asking the stupid questions.

Thanks for all the help so far
Steve Maiorca

 

[KM]

SM,

Ok, I'm pretty sure all of our clients are using the ACPI HAL. It's the one used on both our desktop and laptops. I have a

series of driver cache directories for our desktops and laptops that our normal XP PRO images use to install devices. Is there a
way to point this FBA to look in those directories to find those drivers?

I don't know if you can force FBA to look for some specified directories.
But what you can do is to create a custom component and include it in to your image. The component should just copy all the files
(drivers, infs, dlls) you mentioned to appropriate directories (\windows\system32, \windows\system32\drivers, \windows\inf).
Only make sure that all your drivers' dependencies are in the image (use a tool like Dependency Walker).

Also, how do you actually go about generating the SDI file?

Use SDI Loader/SDI Manager: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/xpehelp/html/xeconSDI.asp
And more about the SDI format here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnxpesp1/html/ram_sdi.asp

Hopefully I can get enough of this in my head to stop asking the stupid questions.

Your questions are not stupid. I have gone the same way to understand some XPe aspects.
Take a look at the XPe docs - they have many answers to many questions.