Public Developer Chat: The New Features of XPe SP2
Posted December 10, 2004
Chat Date: December 1, 2004
Please note: Portions of this transcript have been edited for clarity
Introduction
mikefos_msft (Moderator):
Welcome to today’s Public Developer Chat: The New Features of XPe SP2.
mikefos_msft (Moderator):
We are pleased to welcome our Experts for today’s chat. I will have them introduce themselves now.
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Howdy! I'm Jon Fincher, a Program Manager on the Windows XP Embedded Customer Strike Team.
Aaron Stebner [MS] (Expert):
Hey all, I am a tester on the Windows XP Embedded team. My main focus is on embedded enabling features (EEFs).
JKremer_MSFT (Expert):
I'm Jay Kremer, I'm a program manager in the XP Embedded customer strike team
Lynda [MS] (Expert):
Lynda Allen - Software Test Engineer for Embedded Component Integration
Ravi Gopal (Expert):
Ravi Gopal -- Product Manager -- marketing & business ownership of the product
jomorris (Expert):
Hi there, I am Joe Morris, Lead Program Manager in Embedded Team
Neil Marlowe [MSFT] (Expert):
I am Neil Marlowe and I am a Program Manager in the Windows Embedded Group. My main area of focus is the EEFs (Embedded Enabling Features).
Start of Chat
Ravi Gopal (Expert):
Q: Why do the general public get SP2 before the OEM's?
A: We understand that many customers wanted SP2 prior to its general availability date of today. However we did not have a structured release mechanism by which to enable this scenario uniformly amongst our customer base, hence we did not pursue this option. Due to this, we released our Technology Preview (Release Candidate) publicly two months ago.
Ravi Gopal (Expert):
Q: I haven't seen XPe SP2 download from oem site, is it made available to download?
A: Hello -- it will be on the OEM Restricted Access Site very shortly, we apologize for the delay.
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Q: How do I compile all of the .c files in a directory?
A: I think you're in the wrong place for an answer, Lu - this chat is focused on Windows XP Embedded. That being said, how to compile all the files in a folder is highly dependent on the development environment you use.
Ravi Gopal (Expert):
Q: But the link on the general MS site went live last night, but not for OEM's
A: We understand your concerns and are doing our best to accelerate the release on the OEM Restricted Access Site.
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Q: ROM: can anyone help me I’m doing c programming "basic" I’m trying to run a file (it compiles well but I keep getting an error) I’m using windows xp home edition, could be a that my computer need to be update if so where can I find such update?
A: Like Lu, I think you're in the wrong place for an answer, ROM. I doubt you need an update, but you should find a better expert to ask.
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Q: Can you explain a bit about HORM, i.e. does it have a commit option, or would we still use EWF if we needed this functionality?
A: HORM requires you to use EWF on the device, and yes, you can commit changes in EWF on a machine using HORM. You will need to rehibernate the device after committing the change to restore proper HORM functionality.
mikefos_msft (Moderator):
Just a reminder that our experts are here today to discuss the new features of Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 2.
Lynda [MS] (Expert):
Q: HORM? what is that???
A: Hibernate Once. Resume many
mikefos_msft (Moderator):
Also, please note that if you're asking a question, we'd ask that you please select the "Submit a Question" radio button before sending. That'll queue it up properly for our experts. Thanks!
Aaron Stebner [MS] (Expert):
Q: I've Had some problems with just some applications that does not work after of installed SP2 on XP Professional, what's The Reason
A: This question is off-topic for this chat room. We're taking questions about Windows XP Embedded SP2. That being said, there is a lot of good information on the MSDN site about the desktop version of XP SP2. For application compatibility problems, I would suggest starting with this site - https://support.microsoft.com/xpsp2swhw
Neil Marlowe [MSFT] (Expert):
Q: Can you explain a bit about HORM, i.e. does it have a commit option, or would we still use EWF if we needed this functionality?
A: HORM allows the user to define a hibernated state and EWF is used to ensure that your hibernation file is not invalidated. The combination ensures that the device boots “quicker” from a constant known hibernated state
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Q: how can I 'burn' some songs from my 'my music' file, onto a cd?
A: Again, this chat is focused on Window XP Embedded with Service Pack 2. Burning music to CD's is well beyond our expertise and knowledge-base.
jomorris (Expert):
Q: Automatic login seemed to be broken in SP2-RC. Setting it up through Target Designer was a no-go when the image ran. Was able to tweak the UI after the fact and get it working. Is this a known issue or is something else in SP2 needed?
A: Are you using it along with the system cloning tool? If so , have you installed the QFE Q322200
Lynda [MS] (Expert):
Q: is sp2 installed after image is installed or is it a component added in td?
A: SP2 is installed on your Embedded Database. It is currently necessary to upgrade and rebuild your images with SP2. We are working on a tool that will allow you to identify the differences between SP1 and SP2 runtimes and apply the SP2 updates to devices in the field using your current serving technology.
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Q: Can anyone help me
A: You'll have to be more specific, Brad.
Ravi Gopal (Expert):
Q: can any experts help me
A: Brad -- what is your question?
Aaron Stebner [MS] (Expert):
Q: but in tech preview the resmany.dat doesn’t have any impact .
A: I'm not sure I understand the question. What does FW stand for in this situation? The file resmany.dat needs to be on the root of the system partition and it prevents NTLDR from checking the header of the hibernation file and show the menu asking if you want to clear the contents of the hiberfil.sys.
Aaron Stebner [MS] (Expert):
Q: HORM. Based on info that Dan posted few minutes ago in NG. It appears that resmany.dat tell ntldr only to ignore WAKE switch and not to prewent ntldr from writing it in the first place. So my question is what will happen if I write protect disk in FW.
A: I'm not sure I understand the question. What does FW stand for in this situation?
jomorris (Expert):
Q: Are there any changes to DUA?
A: No changes made to DUA in SP2. Same as SP1
Aaron Stebner [MS] (Expert):
Q: but in tech preview the resmany.dat doesn’t have any impact .
A: One other comment here - I have been able to use resmany.dat to suppress the hibernation file check during boot using both the tech preview and the final SP2 bits and HORM. I would suggest double-checking that you have resmany.dat on the root of the boot partition (typically c:) and that it is present before you enable EWF. Also, there are some good help topics in the SP2 documentation that help guide you through the configuration of HORM and EWF.
Lynda [MS] (Expert):
Q: Yep, all QFE's up to date and worked under SP1 build. Broke when I installed the SP2-RC. Upgraded the same image I had been using. Saw that it lost my setup for Auto login with the upgrade so set it up again. No joy.
A: In the SP2 RC upgrading the config loses the configurable settings. Be sure that when you set your Automatic logon account and password name again you also set the password in the Advanced properties of the appropriate user account component as well
Aaron Stebner [MS] (Expert):
Q: HORM to Aaron. FW = Firmware. Disk report itself as write protected. My question is whether resmant.dat will prevent ntldr from write attempt to disk medium trough BIOS?
A: Thank you for the clarification. NTLDR is the only part of the boot process that knows about resmany.dat, and it only checks for the presence of that file and if it finds it, it skips the header check of hiberfil.sys. You should not see any other firmware-related issues because of that file being present. Note that you do need to make sure to use the specialized EWF NTLDR that ships with XP Embedded for resmany.dat to be recognized.
Aaron Stebner [MS] (Expert):
Q: but in tech preview the resmany.dat doesn’t have any impact .
A: Sorry - one more comment that I forgot about earlier - you should make sure that the version of NTLDR on the root of your boot partition is the EWF NTLDR. The standard NTLDR has no knowledge of resmany.dat.
mikefos_msft (Moderator):
Q: where can I go to find out the user interface,network capabilities,processor management, and security for windows 2000?
A: While not necessarily specific to the items you mentioned, I'd probably recommend the following URL to start with: https://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/default.asp
jomorris (Expert):
Q: We have seen many issues with images with IIS and DX9 on them, where after a fbreseal both DCOM and IIS die completely. Is this something that is fixed in SP2?
A: can you clarify if this was specific to XPE or are you referring to XP Pro?
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Q: Bug related to CD freezing when importing inf files that was present in SP2 TP. What is it. Or is it fixed.
A: There were some updates between the Tech Preview and the final release related to INF importing, so it may be fixed, but I'm unaware of the specific bug, Slobodan.
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Q: The IIS and DX9 issue, we have seen many times with XPe using fbreseal. However we have also seen it creating an identical image with XP pro and sysprep. We currently run fbreseal AFTER moving disk to target hardware which solves the issue in a dirty way
A: As far as IIS goes, this is a known issue - FBReseal can change the name of the machine, which will differ from the name set during FBA. You may be able to resolve this by using FBRESEAL -KEEPALL, which will keep all devices settings (computer name, IP address, mounted devices, etc.) and only change the SID of the machine.
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Q: Hi Jon. Look at windowsxp.embedded.techpreview NG 5 of us reported same problem plus few reports in regular NG. date in TP NG 10/13/2004
A: Thanks, I'll look at it and get back to you in the newsgroup, Slobodan.
Aaron Stebner [MS] (Expert):
Q: Did that. Was not the case that the user account didn't get setup, it was there. Just no auto login. User name and password was entered in the Automatic logon setup. FYI user account was setup to be Administrator also.
A: I have seen an issue where I configure autologon in Target Designer and then run a dependency check and my settings for that particular component get overwritten. It appears to be a build ordering issue when the Windows Logon component is added by the dependency check. This issue is noted in the release notes file. I'm not sure if this is the exact issue impacting you though. You can work around this by adding back the autologon settings after your build completes.
Neil Marlowe [MSFT] (Expert):
Q: ewfmgr <Drive> -commitanddisable -live takes so much of time to complete the operation for eg: 200MB of data takes 25 min to commit and the CPU is fully engaged????
A: That does seem abnormally long. We have not experienced like issues during our testing but we will look into it. Send me PM and I will follow-up with you after the meeting.
Aaron Stebner [MS] (Expert):
Q: Thanks, I'll continue to do the tweak on the image then.
A: Please contact us via the newsgroups if you still run into issues after these tweaks.
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Q: We do fbreseal -keepall as standard, but that doesn’t cure it. I read in a thread it was something to do with MSDTC and other services getting in the way at startup after fbreseal. Without DX9 I haven’t seen the problem.
A: OK, that's interesting. We'll have to follow-up on this and respond after the chat.
mikefos_msft (Moderator):
Again, welcome to today’s chat. We’re here to chat about the new features of Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 2. Questions and comments are welcome.
jomorris (Expert):
Q: where can I go to find out the user interface,network capabilities,processor management, and security for windows 2000?
A: are you referring to Chinook (POS solution on top of XPE)?
jomorris (Expert):
Q: SP2 POS: I was interested in at least some info regarding how can we install boot drivers to it. Do we have some tool similar that replace TD?
A: are you referring to Chinook (POS solution on top of XPE)?
Aaron Stebner [MS] (Expert):
Q: Are there any changes to DUA?
A: While there are not any functional changes to DUA, the help documentation has been greatly improved so hopefully everyone will have much easier experiences getting DUA working in your scenarios. There is also a new white paper about configuring DUA to work with EWF, you can find it at https://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/aa459169.aspx
Aaron Stebner [MS] (Expert):
Q: Is there a fix for the bug in Visual Studio .NET, where when you are using a dual display, a "ghost" window appears in the bottom right corner of the left display, and in the bottom right corner of the left display?
A: This question is off-topic for this chat, we are answering questions about Windows XP Embedded SP2 here. I would suggest posting this bug on the Visual Studio product feedback site at https://connect.microsoft.com/Main/content/content.aspx?ContentID=2220. I have seen great response from the Visual Studio team to bugs and suggestions reported there.
jomorris (Expert):
Q: Chinook I'm unfamiliar with this code name. But some POS solution based on XPe SP2 was announced few months ago.
A: Sorry Slobodan. Chinook is the code name for WE-POS that was publicly announced. WE-POS is an image with OPOS setup. There are no tools associated with it
Neil Marlowe [MSFT] (Expert):
Q: SP2 POS: I was interested in at least some info regarding how can we install boot drivers to it. Do we have some tool similar that replace TD?
A: What kind of boot drivers are you referring to, controller drivers?
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Q: Is it a hardware issue or software that makes windows XP continuously reboot after updates? Can not go in to safe mode or last known good configuration
A: This chat is focused on Windows XP Embedded, Asusman. We're not equipped to answer your question properly. You should pursue this at https://support.microsoft.com.
Lynda [MS] (Expert):
Q: Does SP2 mop up some of the registry errors? like the registry bug in BITS etc
A: I am not sure exactly what registry errors you are referring to, but we have taken some changes to the BITS component for SP2, including registry changes.
Neil Marlowe [MSFT] (Expert):
Q: Is this chat specific topic oriented?
A: Yes, the topic is Windows XP Embedded with SP2
mikefos_msft (Moderator):
We've got about 15 minutes left in today's Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 2 chat. Questions and comments are welcome.
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Q: Registry errors such as - BITS running in wrong account, RS232 parameters missing etc etc
A: We did fix a bunch of low hanging registry key issues for SP2, but they would have been well before the Tech Preview, so you would have already seen them.
Neil Marlowe [MSFT] (Expert):
Q: Neil, I'm interested in providing support for USB boot on Chinook. And I will have to answer to these questions soon. So if installing drivers is not supported. Is it legal to do it trough regedit in offline image?
A: From my understanding, WEPOS uses a setup program like XP professional does. PNP will be used to pull the drivers that the system requires. If they have an additional driver that they need setup to use, you can specify it similar to the way they can in XP professional’s setup.
Other than that, I know that additional announcement and due out shortly.
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Q: There is talk of some new macro components which include all the drivers for various devices - is this true?
A: There is a new component in XPE SP2 called Generic Device Driver component, which allows you to add all devices of a particular class (printer, NIC, video, etc) to a runtime without having to add the individual device components one at a time. In addition to adding support for all types of a device, it also adds support for installing third-party drivers for those device classes on the runtime.
Katherine (Expert):
Howard asked about the Generic Driver Support macro component. There's information about it in the white paper that was published today at https://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/aa460089.aspx.
Lynda [MS] (Expert):
Q: I am curious if there is an upgrade path for my runtime images in the field to SP2, I looked through the documentation in the RC version but didn’t' see anything, can I use DUA to update SP1 images to SP2?
A: SP2 is installed on your Embedded Database. It is currently necessary to upgrade and rebuild your images with SP2. We are working on a tool that will allow you to identify the differences between SP1 and SP2 runtimes and apply the SP2 updates to devices in the field using your current serving technology (incl DUA).
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Q: Jon can you explain "it also adds support for installing third-party drivers for those device classes on the runtime" please?
A: So let say you add Generic Device Driver component and select Printers. Your runtime will not only support all the printers we ship in the box, but will also support an end-user of the device adding a printer driver for a printer we do not directly support. Of course, you as the device builder will have to expose that support somehow, but the underlying class installers, codevice installers, and INF handling code will be present.
Neil Marlowe [MSFT] (Expert):
Q: Neil. Chinook, Does that mean that we will be able to use XP OPK tools with it or there are some tools optimized for WE-POS?
A: Sorry, I don’t know. I have contacted the team and they will follow-up after the meeting
Neil Marlowe [MSFT] (Expert):
Q: In regards to Slobodan's question - I'm assuming Chinook will ship with some form of OPK tools (sysprep, etc.). Could you simply use msdinst.exe from the XP OPK tools and add mass storage controllers to an existing image.
A: Sorry, I don’t know. I have contacted the team and they will follow-up after the meeting
Neil Marlowe [MSFT] (Expert):
Q: In regards to Slobodan's question - I'm assuming Chinook will ship with some form of OPK tools (sysprep, etc.). Could you simply use msdinst.exe from the XP OPK tools and add mass storage controllers to an existing image.
A: Sorry, I don’t know. I have contacted the team and they will follow-up after the meeting. Please refer to the external website https://msdn2.microsoft.com/embedded/aa714298.aspx
Neil Marlowe [MSFT] (Expert):
Q: Chinook question again. Is there any way supported by MS that we can use to preinstall drivers for unsupported boot mediums?
A: Sorry, I don’t know. I have contacted the team and they will follow-up after the meeting. Please refer to the external website https://msdn2.microsoft.com/embedded/aa714298.aspx
mikefos_msft (Moderator):
Thank you for joining us today on a Microsoft Community Chat to talk about the new features of Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 2.
If you would like further information on this topic please visit the following URL:
https://www.microsoft.com/windows/embedded/default.mspx
Jon_MSFT (Expert):
Thanks for coming guys - we appreciate it!
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