Depending on your project it can be a good idea to have more than one operating system instance in place on an embedded system. Looking at Windows Embedded Standard there are several scenarios supported, each with its own pros and cons which I will highlight in this blog post.
Important settings in the boot.ini
It is no secret that the boot.ini is of major importance in to the process of booting a system. Thinking about multi-boot, it is one of the central files, because all available OS instances need to be configured here.
A normal boot.ini file to boot a single OS image looks similar to this (at least on non SCSI systems):
[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows="Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard" /fastdetect /noexecute=AlwaysOff
In the boot loader section a timeout value shows the time the number of seconds the boot menu is displayed (in this case 0 seconds) as well as the default operating system instance into which the system boots when the timeout has elapsed, and no other instance has been manually chosen.
In the operating system section all OS instances are specified using the ARC path naming conventions. ARC is the abbreviation of Advanced RISC Computing, a specification that dates back to long before the first NT kernel has been was developed.
The detailed specification can be viewed in the link above, but the important things to remember are the rdisk entry, which specifies the disk, and the partition entry, which specifies the boot partition.
Please keep in mind that the numbering of disks and partitions is a bit out of sync - disks start with 0 and partitions start with 1. In the example above disk(0), therefore, means the first disk and partition(1) is the first primary partition on the disk.
Right after the disk and partition information, and with no space in-between, the path to the Windows folder is required. It needs to be included without drive letter. The drive is already qualified with the preceding entries.
SCSI system require a SCSI(0) entry instead of Multi(0).
Creating a multi-boot boot.ini
OS instances can be created on the same disk and partition (but in a different folder), on the same disk in another partition or on another disk. What all these options have in common, is that the boot loader (NTLDR), as well as the boot.ini, must reside on the same boot partition (very often the first partition on the first disk).
Note -the boot partition is not specified in the boot.ini. It is defined by marking it active using a disk utility such as diskpart.
A few examples:
- The entry for an instance installed to the WES folder.
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WES="Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard" /fastdetect /noexecute=AlwaysOff
- The entry for an instance on a second partition
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows="Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard" /fastdetect /noexecute=AlwaysOff
- The entry for a Windows Embedded Standard image on a second disk and on a second partition
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\Windows="Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard" /fastdetect /noexecute=AlwaysOff
As an example, to have a working multi-boot system, these types of entries need to be added to the operating system section of the boot.ini:
[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows="Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard" /fastdetect /noexecute=AlwaysOff
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Maintain="Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard Maintenance OS" /fastdetect /noexecute=AlwaysOff
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\Maintain="Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard Lean System" /fastdetect /noexecute=AlwaysOff
These settings offer the choice between three OS instances- a normal Standard system, a maintenance system and a leaner system, with a boot menu set for 10 seconds.
So, when is it good to have multi-boot capabilities?
Dual Boot Development
One of the scenarios is dual boot development, where a normal XP Pro system could reside on disk as first instance and the Windows Embedded Standard image created using it goes to a second partition. This comes in handy for testing because the image is easy to deploy, but it also requires a capable processor and enough RAM to run target designer on the target. Additional drawbacks are that the development system (XP Pro) cannot be used while the new image runs through FBA and the path information has to be adapted to the real target layout before field deployment.
Maintenance
A much better scenario for having more than one OS instance on the embedded system is maintenance. Having a special maintenance OS at hand can be very beneficial if one wants to add more robustness and control to the change management process.
Different Device Usage modes
From an OEM perspective it sometimes makes sense just to have one type of device on stock that is able to adapt to different usage scenarios. Here Windows Embedded Standard multi-boot offers flexibility. A universal device can be developed that adjust to the needs of a certain role just by editing the boot.ini to use the fitting OS instance to boot from. This option requires some additional storage space, of course, but this is cheap nowadays, or?
- Alexander
Alexander Wechsler
Wechsler Consulting
www.wechsler-consulting.de
Technorati Tags:
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embedded
If you have tried out our recently released Windows Embedded Standard product, thank you and we hope you are enjoying it. One more breakthrough in this release is localization. Localization can be done at different levels: the whole product, or just the tool kits, or just the documentation (the one in the product and/or the one on MSDN). After much consideration, in this release, we decided to localize the MSDN documentation. This is now available and you can find it here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/ja-jp/library/bb847995.aspx.
We encourage the Japanese-speaking users to take a look and give us your feedback, such as the accuracy of the translation, the usefulness of the localization, what other localization you would like to see etc. That’ll help us planning future localization activities.You can also send us feedback in Japanese if that’s preferred!
- Weijuan
Technorati Tags:
XPe,
embedded
As we all know, when we run an application on a computer, the operating system will first load it into memory from a hard drive and then execute instructions and do calculations based on data in the memory. Most operating systems (such as XP, Vista) allow people to do multiple tasks simultaneously and load several applications into memory at the same time. To enable this feature only part of the code and data will be loaded into memory for each application. When code or data not in memory are needed, the operating system will generate a Page Fault Exception and start the paging procedure to load the missing part into memory from a hard drive. Obviously, this paging process impacts the application performance as it takes time to read data into memory. Even worse, if there is no free space in memory, operating system has to pick some "victim" pages, save the contents back to hard drive, and then load the data into those page frames. So the capacity of memory in computer is one of the key factors of performance. The bigger the memory is, the more applications and data a computer can hold in memory, and the faster the computer can run.
Nowadays RAM price is quite reasonable, and people are willing to pay a little bit extra money for memory to increase performance on the box. But how much memory (RAM) can people plug into their box? Taking a 32-bit XP or Vista operating systems, which most people have used or are using, as an example, the operating system only allows access to about 232 of total computer address space; 4GB is the technical upper limit. What does “technical upper limit” mean?
Can someone just plug 2 sticks of 2GB memory into the motherboard and have a full 4GB available for use? Let’s check this out on a system to see whether people get what they pay for.
When rebooting a computer after we plug in 4GB of memory, we go into the BIOS and check that the size of RAM shown is 4096MB. So far, so good. Let’s dig deeper to confirm this 4GB memory is recognized by the operating system. After the Windows starts up, by choosing “Computer” from start button, and then right clicking on it and then choosing Properties, we should see “Memory (RAM):“ on screen is 4.00 GB (see below).
Yes again. The operating system confirms that 4GB of memory has been installed in this computer.
It looks like everything is set correctly. Now, let’s check the number on Windows Task Manager. First, open Task Manager, and then click the Performance tab.
Look at the Physical Memory (MB) value. Shouldn’t the total be 4096, instead of 3566? HELLO, WHERE IS THE MISSING 530 MB? Why do the BIOS and System Properties tell me I have 4 GB RAM installed on my box, but Windows Task Manager tells me I don’t?
Well, both of them, 4GB and 3566 MB, are correct. 4GB is the total size of memory which has been installed on computer, and 3566 MB is the total amount of memory that is available on this computer. Or I should say 3566 MB is the total amount of address space that the operating system can assign to RAM.
Theoretically, a 32-bit operating system should support a 232 physical address spaces from 0x00000000 to 0xFFFFFFFF which is 4GB. But not all of this address space is available for RAM. Some of the address space is taken away by other devices, such as the video card or USB controller. When someone buys a nice graphic card with 256 MB video memory on it, the operating system needs to assign a range of address space to the video memory, so it can have access to all of that video RAM on the card.
We can take a look at how much memory space is reserved for each device by opening the Device Manager, changing the view to Resources by Type and expending the Memory tree view. From this dialog (see below), we can clearly see how the physical address space from 0x00000000 to 0xFFFFFFFF has been assigned to the devices on my box. Memory is only one of them.
To verify the RAM allocation, I ran an application called MemInfo.exe (it can be downloaded at http://www.winsiderss.com/tools/meminfo/meminfo.zip) which reports there are 3 address ranges that have been assigned to memory. If we accumulate these 3 numbers together (and divide by 1024 to get MB), we see that the operating system has allocated 3565.35 MB of the physical address space to RAM. This matches the number on Windows Task Manager.
Therefore to those people who want to fully use every byte of their 4GB memory in their computer, it will be a good idea to consider migrating to one of the 64 bit operating systems.
- Shaoying
Technorati Tags:
Xpe,
embedded
In the midst of various holiday vacations, the Windows Embedded team has scheduled a live MSDN Chat on Tuesday, December 9th from 10-11am PST - we hope you can make it! Since we launched Windows Embedded Standard 2009 a few weeks ago, we are excited to hear your feedback and thoughts on the new release. If you haven't gotten your hands on the product yet, you can download a trial version at http://www.windowsembedded.com, then as you play around with it keep a running list of your comments and questions. Then join us for the chat and talk directly with the product team!
You can join the chat at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx.
We look forward to chatting with you in a few weeks!
- Shayna
Technically there are no WES devices shipping yet since Windows Embedded Standard 2009 only just launched the other week, so these devices below are a flavor of Windows Embedded. If the title of this blog only called out XPe without mentioning WES as well, I'd probably have someone from Marketing sending me a polite reminder that WES is the new hotness and to showcase those devices. :-) We'll do that as soon as the devices hit the market.
Bang & Olufsen BeoSound 5 digital music system
SlashGear
The BeoSound 5, a digital music system intended to bridge the gap between the company’s high-end hifi systems and music stored digitally. It runs Windows XP Embedded. Supported formats include WMA, WMA Lossless, MP3, WAV, ASF and AAC, together with Internet radio streams in WMA, MP3, ASX and M3U. It will also show video in MPEG, MPE, MPG, AVI, WMV and VFW formats. 500GB is enough room for over 28,000 songs stored losslessly.
Axiomtek releases the SBC81700 computer
Axiomtek
This Single Board Computer has a Via V4 C7/Eden proc w/ 400MHz FSB and 2xDDR support up to 2GB ram. It's compatible with various embedded operating systems including Microsoft Windows XP Embedded and Windows XP Professional, as well as Linux.
Monster touchscreens run Windows Embedded
WindowsForDevices.com
The "TSn" series displays have built-in Windows Embedded computers based on AMD Athlon64 X2 processors, 1GB of RAM, and 4GBs of flash.
Rugged Pen Based computer running XP, XPe, CE taken for a spin.
RuggedReviewPC.com
The TREK-775 is an industrial vehicle mounted computer made by Advantech. It is a clean machine that combines no-nonsense industrial design, superb ruggedness, easy customization and maintenance, and surprisingly quick performance.
- Andy
In one of my previous posts I mentioned that ESC Boston was taking place in October. Our teams, along with the help of some internal partner teams, delivered 6 sessions on Windows Embedded Standard.
Now, according to the content owner's blog, the PowerPoint slide decks are available to all to download and review, even if you did not attend the conference. Take a look at Olivier's blog for more details.
- Lynda
Technorati Tags: XPe, Embedded
The November 2008 - Service Pack 3 for Windows XP Embedded Optional Update is now available on the ECE for Microsoft® Windows® XP Embedded with Service Pack 2 and/or Feature Pack 2007.
Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 3 (SP3) is a roll-up of hot-fixes and security updates Microsoft has released since Service Pack 2 (SP2). It also includes select out-of-band releases, and a small number of new enhancements, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system. Windows XP Embedded SP3 provides a new baseline for customers deploying Windows XP Embedded. For customers with existing Windows XP Embedded installations, SP3 fills the gap in the updates they might have missed.
Please check this link on the ECE for more details:
November 2008 - Service Pack 3 for Windows XP Embedded Optional Update – Product Download
https://ece.partners.extranet.microsoft.com/ece/ProductSupplements/DownloadCenter/Embedded/XPE/XPEMonthlyUpdates/DistOEM-Nov08-SP3WinXPEOptUp.htm
If you have questions on accessing the ECE, please email MS Mobile & Embedded Communications Feedback & Support, ECE@microsoft.com.
Thanks
- Patrick
Technorati Tags: XPe, Embedded
Windows Embedded Standard does not normally require too much troubleshooting, because the boot process is exactly the same as in XP Professional. But, according to Murphy’s Law, something will go wrong, no matter how the small the chance is. This post will try to give an overview of the most common reasons for failure and the ways to resolve them.
Disk Preparation
I am starting with disk preparation because, from what I have seen, this is the most common reason that a system does not boot. The most important things to remember here are that:
- the booting partition needs be marked as active
- the master boot record should be the correct one for the file system on the disk
If either of these things are not set, will get an error message from the BIOS such as:
No system disk or operating system
This can easily be resolved by following the steps I have laid out in a previous post. You can use diskpart to activate and format the partition in the desired way. Formatting the disk as NTFS normally writes the correct MBR, but you can also use other utilities such as bootprep to prepare the disk for booting to otehr file systems (like FAT). In addition, there also some easy-to-use freeware utilities on the web that help fix boot record problems.
ARC path configuration
Another common issue occurs when the ARC path in the boot.ini is not in sync with the real disk layout. This is normally set in the configuration of the Target Device settings for the image:
It is very important to set the right options, especially selecting the correct boot drive, Windows folder and ARC path.
Quite often the fact that disks in the ARC path are enumerated starting at 0 and partitions are enumerated starting at 1 causes some confusion. To correct this the best way is to start diskpart e.g. on WinPE on the target device using the detail disk as well as the detail partition commands to get an overview on the real layout of the media.
Sometimes disks prepared by OEMs have a hidden maintenance partition that requires a change in the partition entry in the ARC path (such as setting partition = 2).
The Windows folder path should point the exact path you expect it to be deployed to on the actual partition. It is normally c:\windows but could be e.g. c:\WES\Windows in a dual boot scenario.
If the settings above are not correct the system will react with one of the following error messages:
- NTLDR is missing
- Windows\Sytem32\Hal.dll is missing
- No system disk or operating system
Unfortunately, there is no simple fix that you can configure on the system at this point and the Windows Embedded Standard image must be rebuilt to get all the correct settings.
Fighting Windows Product Activation
Another issue you might experience, which not really is a boot issue, is the wrong boot partition size. If this is not set correctly during build and one tries to deploy a Windows Embedded Standard image, for example to a 8GB flash card instead of the configured 1GB card, a message window generated by Windows Product Activation will pop up telling you that this image is not configured for this device and FBA will stop immediately. Closing the window reboots the system. This clearly shows that WPA is included in Windows Embedded Standard although no online activation is required.
The solution here is to set the correct size of the boot partition in the configurable settings in Target Device and rebuild the image.
Handling file compression
Very often CF cards use NTFS file compression to save space. In this scenario it is important not to compress the files required for booting the system (ntldr, boot.ini, ntdetect.com), because the boot loader is not able to read compressed files. This normally leads to messages such as:
NTLDR is missing
USB boot
When booting from USB, preparethe USB flash device either using the UFDPrep utility running on XP:
UFDPrep.exe F: (where F is the drive letter resembling the USB flash device)
or format the UFD under VISTA with diskpart. Vista is able to create bootable UFDs (UFDprep does not when running it from a Vista dev machine).
- Alexander
Alexander Wechsler
Wechsler Consulting
www.wechsler-consulting.de
Technorati Tags:
XPe,
embedded
Today is my first day back in the office after participating in TechEd EMEA last week in Barcelona. I am starting to get groggy from jet lag, but wanted to put down a few details about my experience there.
This year was the first year that we had a dedicated Embedded track and we had a total of 29 sessions (breakout presentations,interactive sessions, labs and panel discussions) covering Windows Embedded Standard, Windows Embedded CE, . POS for .NET, NavReady and also .NET Micro Framework. We had a pretty good turnout to the presentations- roughly 30-50 people per session. Most of the content we presented was at an introductory level as we were exposing our products to a whole new audience.
I delivered two presentations, one on "Introduction to Windows Embedded Standard" and then one on "Building Custom OS Images Using Windows Embedded Standard" which detailed some of the planning, footprint, servicing and security aspects when building an image. I had 48 people at the first session, which went smoothly, and 31 in the second, which had some technical glitches forcing some inventiveness on the part of the audio\visual support crew in the room and then I ran out of time in the demo so never got to show the final mage booting off USB key with my cool custom shells, different security permissions for different users and File Based Write Filter <sigh>. I had a very patient and understanding audience. I did set up my demo image in the booth on the exhibition floor after my session so that it was available for people to come by and see if they wanted to, and a few did.
We did not do as well with the interactive sessions. For the session on "Protecting a Windows Embedded Standard Image With Write Filters", which was designed to be a deeper dive into these features and a general forum for a more in-depth look at any aspect of Standard that the audience wanted, I only had one attendee (so he got a very in-depth and personalized tour of the product!) and we had no one turn up for our panel discussion on all Embedded products. It might have been because there was a conflict with one of the cool CE sessions at the time, given by Doug Boling, one of the embedded MVPs.
I got to meet with some of our ISV Gold partners as well - MPC-Data, based in the UK, and Theoris, based in France, and got some good questions and also suggestions from them. One of the highlights for me was being invited to attend a dinner with some for the top software architects that are regular and very popular speakers at Microsoft events (David Chappell, Pat Helland, Roy Osherove, Udi Dahan etc.). It was a very enlightening evening and conversation ranged from software to earthquakes to nutrition! Mostly what struck me was that with any topic these guys can instantly understand the problem and issues, and can almost always provide a perspective that you would not have considered.
Overall it was an enjoyable conference, and I look forward to our continuing participation in TechEd moving forward, and also to diving into more detailed topics for the Windows Embedded product family.
- Lynda
Technorati Tags:
XPe,
embedded
Have you noticed that there is a huge amount of Windows XP Embedded related content on the public internet?
Have you also discovered that it can be hard to find, collect and organize the information you need to answer XPE questions and solve XPE problems?
Did you ever wish for a "Top Level" reference document that ties together all the myriad resources? A single document that you can search to find your solutions or links to solutions?
Wish no more!
The XPE Developer Resource Kit is a free document available here.
This document will guide you through the complete process of evaluating, choosing, designing, installing, debugging, testing, shipping and servicing an effective, reliable and secure Windows XP Embedded device.
Note that this document replaces five (5) documents that formerly appeared on the download link. It has been refreshed with the latest internet links and expanded to include the Feature Pack 2007 and Update Rollup 1.0 updates.
Mark
So, you’ve got a device that’s running Windows Embedded, but you can’t remember exactly which version of XPe or WES the image was built with. Is there some way to check what version of Windows Embedded the device is running? There sure is!
The version information for Windows Embedded is located in the following three registry entries:
Now you’re probably saying to yourself, “Robert, this is great! Now I can figure out which version of Windows Embedded is installed on my device! Now I’ll just go on the device, hit Start->Run, type in “regedit”, and navigate to these entries….. Ugh! Robert, I didn’t include the Registry Editor component in my image! What do I do now?”
If you didn’t include the Registry Editor in your device’s image, you’ve got two options: connect to your device using your developer machine and the Remote Registry Service, or connect your device’s storage media to your developer machine and manually load the SYSTEM hive.
Remote Registry Service
If your device has a network connection and you happened to include the Remote Registry Service component, then this option is for you. Open up the Registry Editor (Start->Run, type in regedit, hit enter) on your developer computer (a computer with a network connection running a desktop version of Windows). Go to File->Connect Network Registry. In the “Enter the object name to select” box, type in your Windows Embedded device’s IP address or computer name and click OK.
Depending on a variety of security settings and the network connectivity of your device, you’ll either be brought back to Registry Editor (where you’ll now see your device’s registry alongside your local computer’s registry and you can find the version information from the table above) or you’ll see some sort of error message saying you can’t connect. If you were unlucky enough to receive such an error, there are a few things you can try.
- Make sure your device has network connectivity
- Make sure (or hope) that your image contains the Remote Registry Service, and that the service is turned on (it is by default)
- If the account you’re trying to connect with doesn’t have a password associated with it, or the password is blank, the connection will fail. Give the account a password, or use an account that already has one set.
- If you have the Windows Firewall component installed on your device, make sure the Remote Assistance exception is turned on. If this doesn’t help, you may want to try just temporarily turning off the firewall. Make sure you turn it back on when you’re done!
Manually Loading a Registry Hive
So, your device doesn’t have network connectivity, doesn’t have the Remote Registry Service component, or you’ve tried the steps above and couldn’t get things to connect? Well luckily there’s one final option that can be a bit of a pain, but is much less dependent on the device’s configuration, which makes it a bit more foolproof.
First, plug your device’s storage media into your developer computer. If your device’s Windows Embedded image is installed on a hard drive, this can be a bit of a pain, but if it’s installed on a USB key, compact flash disk, or CD, then this should be pretty easy.
Open up Registry Editor on the developer computer. Click on your local copy of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (HKLM), and then go to File->Load Hive. Navigate to your device’s disk, and go to \Windows\System32\config\, and then open up the file named SYSTEM. This is your Windows Embedded device’s HKLM\SYSTEM branch of the registry. After you select the SYSTEM file, you’ll be asked to enter a Key Name. This is what you want to name the device’s registry entry when you’re viewing it in Registry Editor, not which key you want to open. So, give it a name that’s distinctive, and that you’ll easily be able to find, like MyDeviceRegistry.
Now your device’s SYSTEM branch of the registry should be loaded under HKLM\MyDeviceRegistry. For some reason, CurrentControlSet won’t show up, but the same version entries will be available under ControlSet001 and ControlSet002, so you can check either of those branches for the entries listed above.
- Robert
Technorati Tags:
XPe,
Embedded
Friday, the 2nd day of TechEd China in Beijing, I was packed with sessions back to back. 2 breakout sessions, 1 instructor led lab, 1 hour of booth duty. Almost had no time for a lunch, but felt happy as always to see new faces, and hear new questions.
In this TechEd, other than wearing the hat as the “expert” on Windows Embedded, I am also wearing the hat as one of the authors of the second book in a series “Microsoft 360 Degree” written in Chinese. The books talk about Microsoft corporate culture and are finished by a group of Redmond-based Chinese employees like myself. During lunch time, I joined 2 other authors/speakers and the publisher to promote the book and meet the readers. We shared the experience of writing this book, and our learning/growing stories in Microsoft. Later when I was at our product booth, one girl stopped me. She told me in that lunch session, she felt I have a very human side of Microsoft, she likes it. She is graduating and asked if she can come to work in my team. I was surprised by her request but amazed by her courage. I couldn'd say no. She was slightly surprised when I told her I am actually not working in China but US. I offered to take her resume and see if I can refer her to local teams. Another interesting thing about the book was, today outside the speaker room when waiting for a media interview from "51CTO Network", I mentioned to coworkers there that in last TechEd, I autographed a few books (like a big star*_^). Then they started chasing me to autograph for themJ.
Saturday, the last day of this TechEd China. One of the local consultants on Embedded from Microsoft Shanghai office co-hosted with me in the Community session. The little cabana like area was packed with 30+ people. That area was in an open space, therefore it also attracted a few people who were just walking by to stop. I first played the Chinese version of our vision video (BTW, all English versions of our videos can be found here), then presented a few slides of Windows Embedded product road map and the community and ecosystem overview, and then we opened for Q/A. Most of the questions were on CE, no surprise. What surprised me was there was no lack of questions. We were warned earlier that in a few other community sessions, audience were quiet and had not enough questions. Here are a few example of the questions from the audience: how to migrate drivers developed on XP Pro to CE; what’s the catch to run Silverlight 2.0 on CE and how to make it work; what is the vision or next step of .NET Micro Framework. One customer described their current design scenario (kiosk or information terminals in rural China where feature or security updates will be quite frequent) and asked us to recommend what product he should choose. I explained what Windows Embedded Standard can offer, especially the integration with SCCM and other servicing approaches. Also suggested him to take a look at virtualization. Another customer talked about issues from their work in IPTV space.
My day in TechEd concluded with the interview with TechNet. The interviewer Andy was great, made me feeling really relaxed. We talked about 2 areas: the Chinese employee community in Microsoft (aka CHIME); and the Windows Embedded product – the vision of Smart, Connected, and Service-Oriented Devices, the product family, my sessions and the learning from the interaction with the audience. I was glad to have another opportunity to bring awareness to our product in China. They said the interview video will be available in December.
After almost 2 weeks of travelling and presenting, finally I felt relieved it came to a good end. It was a tiring trip but I had a lot of fun too (I am gathering photos and will post them here later). As I wrote in a quick update email to Andy today, I felt this trip was so fruitful, I learned so much, and got pumped so much on the opportunities and challenges we are facing in China. I look forward to going back to Redmond and working with the team there and here to sort them out! The torch will be carried on in good hands, and even greater games are just about to start!
Weijuan
It’s Saturday morning in Beijing and Friday night in Seattle. TechEd China is still going on in its full swing for the 3rd and also the last day. I have done by breakout sessions and lab sessions, will have one community session, one hour of booth duty, and 2 half-hour interviews with TechNet.
Looking back, last a couple of days have been hectic, experienced the so called “labor intensive” working style of my local coworkers, hopping from presentations to keynote demos, from customer meetings to instructor-led labs…
Wednesday morning Nov. 6, I presented the introduction session of Windows Embedded Standard in Shanghai. Surprisingly saw a college classmate come into my session, but unfortunately didn’t have a chance to talk to her at all. I had to rush to the airport right after the session, trying to catch the rehearsal of the keynote demo of TechEd Beijing. Luckily, the flight arrived slightly ahead of time. Wei, my demo backup, reminded me on the phone to ask the cab driver to rush. It turned out I didn’t need to say that, that cab driver was browsing through his MP3 players and shifting from lanes to lanes all the time, beating most of others cars. I had to hold my breathL. Finally safely arrived at the keynote venue, the Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium, across the famous “Bird Nest”. Stage directors, audio/video technicians, demo’ers, speakers, and other staff were jumping up and down the stage or running around in the stadium. Got a moment to talk to last TechEd China’s Speaker Manager and found out from her Obama won. Then I was able to take a break and shift to a slow motion. We worked with the speaker of the session “UX and Tools “ that our demo was arranged in, crafted some dialogs, and finally had a chance to jump on the stage and played the demo hardware. It was actually a breeze for me coz in Guangzhou and Shanghai I have ran the demo in a Virtual PC environment in my breakout sessions. I was pretty clear what I needed to say. I was told we have to wait here for the real rehearsal later. Stomach started singing after 6:00. Some brought in sandwiches. I frowned: nope, in China, I got to eat authentic Chinese food, anytime, anywhere, period. Then about 7pm, I gave up and opened the food wrapper. Right at the moment, one guy came to us from nowhere: “Do you want rice?” What, I couldn’t believe this was happening, he got a cart of boxed Chinese food. “Yes, Yes, Yes! Thank you so much! What’s your name?” I dropped the sandwiches and answered him in joyJ. After one hour, it turned out we didn’t need to rehearse any more. We were dismissed but told to come back tomorrow before 8am. Grabbed my luggage, jumped in a taxi and headed to the hotel…
Thursday started early again. But I realized actually the keynote staff were in even earlier than me (or left much later than me last night). Each seat of the first row was stamped with a demoer’s name. I found my seat and sat down, appreciated their hard work. I produced big events with over 1500 audience before and know how hard it is to pull everything together for a great show. 9:30am, the show started with a stunning dance (see pictures below): 7 male dancers dressed in Qing Dynasty style costumes; they danced in the backstage but were projected on the big screen with background of clouds, mountains, oceans…I liked their poses, the energy and the power that was reflected in their moves. It’s similar to some of the dances you saw in the opening ceremony of the Olympics Games this summer. At the end, the 6 of them came out to the stage and we could see what they were wearing exactly. I saw the dance in the rehearsal yesterday, but still felt so amazed, a shuttering feeling, breathtaking, couldn’t help appreciating the great Chinese culture.
Fast forward...time for us to get ready to the stage. I had a cowboy hat in my hand, borrowed from a coworker who sat next to us. He’s about to perform in the gala lunch later. I wanted to put on a hat to add some flavor when demoing the kiosk developed to be used in a theme park. I asked Wei to co-demo with me coz he’s so familiar with the hardware, can cover any fire if any (who knows what could happen in a keynote demo). Wei was still practicing to himself while we were standing by at the edge of the stage bottom. So diligent he was, I was impressed. Finally, our demo turn came! I wasn’t nervous at all, ok, maybe a little bit. Do the talk, move the mouse, make a friendly joke, I was doing fine. Then put on the cowboy hat, touch the screen, I was still fine. Then when demoing moving around a live video piece in that Kiosk machine, my fingers were trembling (I knew it, Wei told me later too. Who else saw that???) because I knew from the rehearsal that the move was a tricky one. Luckily, it worked fine. The demo finished smoothly (see pictures below). Yeah! High five! If there was one regret, that would be that we didn’t have enough time to demo our tools, e.g. Target Designer. We were only given 5 minutes and advised to focus on the user experience aspect of the demo.
After the lunch gala, I had to miss the 3rd section of the keynote and went to visit a customer accompanied by a local sales coworker. We discussed the updates on Windows Embedded Standard 2009 and "Quebec". Also discussed some technical issues such as EWF which they are using on their kiosk machines. After that meeting, finally I got to meet the local account manager for embedded Lillian in a dinner. We’ve been in communications through emails often in the past years, but never had time to meet until now. Lilian has been always on the go, travelling between cities, once again a “labor-intensive worker” J. Lillian impressed me with her fast-speaking and to-the-point style too. I told myself: hmm, don’t think I can be a good sales person like her... After the dinner, I realized I needed to update my slides of tomorrow’s morning and afternoon breakout sessions. I also needed to check the instructor-led lab which was problematic when we were using it in Guangzhou coz we didn't get the right version of the VPC. Updated the slides, then rushed to the lab room. The lab staff were still deploying the lab VPCs to the 40+ machines. They were prepared to stay up the whole night, eating KFC chicken wings.
Friday, 3rd day in a row, had to rush in the morning to present the introduction session at 9am. For the first time, the room was almost packed with over 80 people. [To be continued......]
Weijuan
As part of Windows Embedded Standard 2009, we have added inbox support for System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1.
System Center Operation Manager is an Enterprise Software Solution that can do end to end monitoring in the enterprise IT environment. System Center Operations Manager provides an easy-to-use monitoring environment that monitors thousands of events and performance counters across hundreds of operating systems and applications to provide a single view of the health of an organization’s IT environment. This view of a service’s health is key to a rapid, agile response to events that may impact the normal running of a business and ultimately cost an enterprise money.
Some of the key scenarios that Embedded Customers use OpsMgr for are:
· Client Monitoring
· Health Monitoring
· Crash and Hang Monitoring
· Application Monitoring
· Hardware Monitoring
· Performance Monitoring
· Collective Health Reporting
· Management Packs for Custom Hardware or Software
Windows Embedded Standard 2009 includes a Prerequisite Component that includes all the components required to install the System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 Client onto your Standard Device. Below you will see that you can include the component in Target Designer by locating it on the left under Software -> Applications -> Management and then selecting SCOM 2007 SP1 Agent Prerequisites.
After adding the component to your Standard Image, you can then choose from 4 optional component options, these components are not required to install the OpsMgr client, but are frequently used by customers that install the OpsMgr client on their devices.
Along with the Prerequisites to install the client, there may be additional components you need depending on the Management Packs you use in System Center Operations Manager. Since these can be very custom, we cannot provide any sort of list, but WMI is used by many of the Management Packs.
Don’t forget to install the OpsMgr Agent onto your final device.
One last note: OpsMgr 2007 is not supported by XPe SP2, FP2007 or Update Rollup 1.0. This is due to the fact that OpsMgr 2007 SP1 requires MSXML6 which was not included in XPe Sp2, Feature Pack 2007 or Update Rollup 1.0. So we are not able to create a Prerequisite Macro, nor has the OpsMgr Team done any testing to ensure their client installs properly on these platforms.
XPe FP2007 and Update Rollup 1.0 still support Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 SP1. This was the previous version of OpsMgr. You must add the MOM 2005 SP1 prerequisite component to your component database, and then you can add it to your image. Check out Lynda’s previous blog post for more details here. Or you can download the component here.
- Parag
The October 2008 Windows XP Embedded Optional Updates are now available on the ECE for Microsoft® Windows® XP Embedded with Service Pack 2 and/or Feature Pack 2007.
The following updates are included in this release – please see the ECE for more details:
· KB957782 - The description for Event ID ( 852 ) in Source (Security) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The fix adds the missing registry keys to the Event Log component.
The October 2008 Windows XP Embedded Optional Updates are available at the following link on the ECE:
https://ece.partners.extranet.microsoft.com/ece/ProductSupplements/DownloadCenter/Embedded/XPE/XPEMonthlyUpdates/DistOEM-Oct08WinXPEmbOptUpd.htm
If you have questions on accessing the ECE, please email MS Mobile & Embedded Communications Feedback & Support, ECE@microsoft.com.
- Patrick
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