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May 2005 - Posts

XP on a Pentium 166? Heck yeah.
Ok, maybe the title is misleading. XP-Pro can't be installed on a P-166, but XP Embedded can. For details you can check out the XP Professional system requirements here , among others they include: 300MHz proc 64MB RAM A common question I hear about XPe Read More...
Send us your XP Embedded bugs!
In one of the internal discussion groups this weekend there's been a lot of talk about how the 'average joe' can send Microsoft a bug report, it's admitedly not intuitive, that's for sure. Well, some teams like VS have a method , most teams do not. Our Read More...
Moving the Eventlog files to an unprotected volume
Nandini wrote a tip article long ago with tips on using Ram Overlay . Among other things, she discusses how to move the Eventlog files to an unprotected volume, this is a subject that came up in the newsgroups again. If you browse the keys below, you'll Read More...
3VR and a cool use for XP Embedded
3VR is a company that delivers XPe based devices to resolve a huge problem for the security industry. The problem they're taking on is how to deal with information overload. Here's a good whitepaper (pdf format) from 3VR with basic theory of operation Read More...
Tweaking settings – Part2
In my previous blog post about tweaking settings I had mentioned that tweaking just the registry key info that held the User Interface Core check box information was not sufficient to effect changes to some of the desktop and Start menu settings. I will Read More...
XPe Database Arch 101: The Platform
Throughout the components or SLDs (as seen in notepad or Visual Studio) you'll see a reference to the "PlatformGUID" {B784E719-C196-4DDB-B358-D9254426C38D}. In fact, every file resource, every repositoy resource and every component dependency resource Read More...
Microsoft Enters the Retail Revolution!
Did you know the XP Embedded team has internal customers? Take the XPe Solutions team. Yesterday they released to the world a product based on XP Embedded components: Windows Embedded for Point of Service . If you're not familiar with it start at the Read More...
Hurray, there's new Geodes to play with!
While checking my feeds from Embedded.com this evening i ran across an announcement from AMD regarding the latest edition in the low power proc family - the AMD Geode LX 800 . Its power consumption runs at 0.9W (~ 500MHz though). Here are the benchmarks Read More...
Forgot to tweak your settings in Target Designer?
It is common occurrence to build and deploy a runtime, boot to the desktop and realize that you have forgotten to tweak the settings in the User Interface Core component, so all you see is the Start menu button and nothing else. There are several tricks Read More...
Intel's guide to Optimizing your Retail business
While browsing Inte's retail industry web pages I found this whitepaper (pdf format) . It's titled "Optimizing Retail Store Operations Drives Retail Success". Intel notes the obvious upfront that " ...the key ingredient to winning the market and growing Read More...
Boot perf an issue? Improve your POST time.
One of the MEDC customers I chatted with was close to finalizing on the image they're shipping on a Single Board computer that requires fast boot, but the BIOS POST time was killing them. They're leveraging HORM , but the POST itself was around 8+ seconds Read More...
When new HW categories crop up
During XPe-SP2 we ran into something we hadn't had to deal with since XPe Gold years before, supporting drivers that had no pre existing HW category or Class Installer in the database. I'm referring to Bluetooth . So while having to confront componentizing Read More...
Visibility Zero
[edit: 5/20/05, fixed typo in the sql query] You may find the following is useless information, but might be used in a quiz at the end of the year, so anything you find on the blog *might* be testable. <grin> If you have SQL Server installed (and Read More...
More on the XP Embedded hives
As mentioned in one of the MEDC sessions (on the subject of FBA I think), when TD is building the runtime it creates hives on the development machine and populates all your component registry resources to these temporary hives. When the build process Read More...
XPe page on Wikipedia
You familiar with Wikipedia ? If so, check out the Windows XP Embedded page, please build on it. In December I started that page, before that it was just a redirector to Windows XP and had no content previous to that. Looks like a couple of people have Read More...
There's still time to take the survey...
As mentioned exactly 2 months ago , Windows For Devices has the 2005 Windows Embedded Market Survey on line. There's still time to take it and it's only 11 questions. Before you ask, no, I'm not getting paid or any kick backs to mention this survey! <grin> Read More...
Componentizing Winamp – PT 5
Yeah, yeah, I know i've been slacking on this Winamp project. In my defense, I took a short hiatus from this project to go to MEDC and meet our customers :P The next step in this process to componentize Winamp is to determine the component dependencies, Read More...
re: There's still time to take the survey...
It is ok Read More...
Winlogon vs. Minlogon
This isn’t meant to be an all inclusive description of the pros and cons of Winlogon vs. Minlogon. But there is some confusion of why they conflict in your configuration and why some features have behavioral problems with Minlogon. If you want details Read More...
How to transfer your XPe environment to a new machine
Here’s an oldy but a goody from the newsgroups Doug Gordon surfaced in the newsgroups in September 2003 Q: I'll have to install the XPE kit on the new PC, including the database server, but what should I do about the database & repositories that I Read More...
Hives and *.SAV hives
If you ever look in the pre-FBA runtimes under the .\windows\system32\config folder where the pre-setup registry hives are located you'll find duplicates of the hives. For instance, there's a SYSTEM and a SYSTEM.SAV hive. One of the very first things Read More...
Use VPC and live longer
To date I have never installed, used or touched Virtual PC. I know some customers have said that it's made their lives a little easier, but until the MEDC trip I hadn't really thought about it much because the time to go through FBA on VPC is probably Read More...
Windows Embedded Partners of the year - 2005
Windows For Devices has a good breakdown of the winners of the North American Partners of the Year for Windows Embedded that were honored during MEDC. Includes categories in IHVs, ISVs, OEMs, Silicon Vendor and Systems Integrator. Congratulations to Intel, Read More...
Common questions of XPe during MEDC
I haven't compared notes with Lynda, Nandini and Joe or any of the PMs yet that came to MEDC with us, i'll do that later. But this is a short list of the most frequently asked questions of me by our customers during 1:1 interaction at MEDC this week - Read More...
MEDC Day 3
Man, I'm tired. But I'm satisfied we're making our customers happier. I've got lots of pics to post later from some of the hand's on sessions, the 'Ask the Experts' cabana, the Exibition Hall and 'action' shots in between. I've had tons of time to network Read More...
Fun in the Sun- MEDC2005
The fun of MEDC 2005 has well and truly started. The anticipation began yesterday with Sean Liming’s pre-conference tutorial where he gave an overview of XP Embedded tools and features- more detailed information is available in Nandini’s blog post yesterday Read More...
Mike Hall’s presentation during the keynote address
Mike Hall kicked butt. He was the second presenter after BillG to demonstrate technologies from MED. He demo’d Component Designer to create a component to act as a custom shell in a Kiosk device. Then he moved on to Target Designer to assemble a custom Read More...
Didn't come to MEDC? Don't fret, the keynote will be a live Webcast!
Bill Gates is giving the keynote speach to Mobile and Embedded Developers Tuesday. If you couldn't come (tsk tsk, maybe next year?), you can at least watch the webcast of the speech live from Las Vegas, 9am - 10:30am Pacific. - Andy Read More...
Reporting from MEDC, Las Vegas
This is the first day of the Mobile and Embedded Developer’s Conference(MEDC) 2005 at Las Vegas. I am attending this conference along with a couple of my team members. The XPe sessions and hand-on-lab haven’t yet started but there was a pre conference Read More...
MEDC 2005, finally!
Most of our team arrived Sunday while a few stragglers are still flying in today. That’s ok because not a whole lot going on today except Pre-Conference tutorials that last all day (9am-5pm). One of those tutorials was split up between Sean Liming (for Read More...
MEDC, here we come!
Sunday we head down to Vegas for MEDC 2005 (Mobile Embedded Developers Conference). From my team - Lynda, Nandini, Joe Ayala and myself will be travelling Sunday to meet our customers, talk about what we're doing and where we're going, make a lot of new Read More...
Support home page for XP Embedded
Mark Chamberlain pointed our team to a new resource for our Embedded customers - a Help and Support Home page from XPe PSS. It's you're one stop shop for support topics on XPe for everything from "Administration" to "Startup and Shutdown". Includes "How-To" Read More...
Componentizing Winamp – Pt 4
When we last left off, in Part 2 of this series we had installed Winamp while monitoring all the resources installed or modified on the system, capturing that information in a log. After that, in Part 3 , we had ported the registry and file resources Read More...
A Running list of CF devices used by customers
Based on a thread in the WFD forums, Sean Liming started keeping track of CF devices "that just work" for XPe. This question comes up all the time, wrt which CF's have had performance issues, burnout too soon, won't boot, etc...The problem here though Read More...
April Security Updates for Embedded
The following April security updates for XP Embedded have been released and can be downloaded from here . Below are a list of the components affected and links to the KB articles for more details on the functional and behavioral changes. For SP1 and SP2: Read More...
Cabs with a view
Found this story on ITWorld about cabs in metropolitan areas being outfitted with Windows XP Embedded Information Appliance devices built into the back of the driver seat. The passenger can surf the web, check sports, view TV guides, find the nearest Read More...
Embedded Systems and Linux
I'm too tired to type up the Winamp Pt 4 article tonight, so I'll reach into my bag of saved stuff and toss you a moderately interesting article on O'Reilly by Karim Yaghmour. It's called " Embedded Systems, Linux, and the Future ", it was written almost Read More...
XPe Resource Guide from PSS
Our cohorts in PSS that are dedicated to XP Embedded are constantly thinking about our customers and how to improve your experience. The odds are good that if you contact PSS Mark Chamberlain may be one of the guys that takes your case. Last year, when Read More...
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