Thread: Need ideas on how to accomplish getting a screen fabbed into my bezel please..

Originally Posted by tbird2340

Sort of a silly question but figured I'd ask just in case it's possible..

The Nitro we bought has Sirius Sattelite radio in the factory deck.. The previous owner must have paid for a membership because it still works for us.. Would it be possible for me to somehow use this subscription in the CarPC? Can I somehow use the existing antenna? What other hardware would I need if it would be possible?

Thanks!

When I changed out Sirius receivers to a PC compatible one, Sirius allowed me to make the switch free of charge. But it my case it was my account. I don't know if you could take over ownership from the previous, you'd have to call Customer Service and find out. A lot of that depends on if the previous owner has other receivers on that account or not.

Originally Posted by Machinehead

nst6563 tells me that EWF makes his systems boot faster. I haven't tested that myself. EWF is pretty much a necessity on a CF card system because there are a finite number of times you can write to one of those cards. Not to mention much like an SSD writes is slower than reads. EWF with HORM isn't that much different than using hibernation, other than you always start from the exact same hibernation every single time, no shutdown required. nst6563 was getting like 12 second resumes with his system. I think he gets sub 15 second cold boots with just EWF. Hopefully he'll notice that I keep mentioning his user name and will pop in to give his 2 cents.

HA! sorry...haven't been to the site in a while (stupid work getting in the way of fun again).

I do have extremely fast boot times with my setup. 12-15s cold boot is the normal I experience, and that includes the POST process. Obviously a few seconds will depend on the hardware used, but just by using EWF alone, I shaved nearly 8 seconds from my boot time. HORM is optional with EWF.

My hardware is as follows :

Cheap-as-hell Zotac 610i mini-itx mb (I was honestly surprised by the quality for a $45 board)
Core2 based Celeron 1.6Ghz ($35)
2GB low latency Patriot DDR2 800 ($10 at Frys... I love Frys...)
32Gb Patriot Warp v2 SSD ($80 at Frys)
80GB Toshiba for data storage (also houses all the apps I use on the carpc in case I need to re-install - they're all right there already)
Asus Xonar-DX PCI-E sound ($80 @ newegg)
USB's - Touchscreen, BlueTooth, Wireless N

If you're running XP and want faster boot times, I'd definately recommend EWF. Horm... IMO doesn't make a bit of difference unless it shaves a few seconds off. With EWF or HORM, no changes will be saved unless you specifically make them. I have icons in my start menu and on the desktop to enable/disable/display info on EWF. I was going to integrate them into buttons for RR...but haven't had time.

If you really want to get deep into it, you can use both EWF AND Hibernation....as Windows excludes writing hibernation data from the EWF rules. This way, you can not only have a safe system by using EWF, but you can also save your place with hibernation...and if the hibernation file becomes corrupt, delete and cold boot. EWF will still be enabled and no harm done (other than any changes you made and saved with hibernation without flushing ewf to disk will be lost). I did this for almost a year. The only problem I found with this method is that over time, the EWF tables in RAM will get full, and it will either cause your machine to spontaneously reboot with no warning, or BSOD. So periodically you need to flush the EWF data to disk or wipe the hibernation data.

If you're considering EWF just remember it makes your drive READ only...any writes will have to be manually invoked as everyone else has mentioned.

If you'd like to see some bootvis reports I can upload them showing the before/after EWF.

I guess here's my list of pro's/cons (at least as I see them in my system)
Pros:
Increased performance by re-directing disk writes to ram
Keeps your system in "just installed" condition
Prevents un-wanted changes from occuring (whether it be malware/virus/accidental misconfiguration)
Allows you to "test drive" something...and if you don't like it...just reboot and it's gone - no need to uninstall (you must have enough ram though for this)
Changes are extremely controlled.

Cons:
Changes have to be manually invoked or they're lost.

I've been running EWF for nearly 3 years and love it. I've set it up in my car, my server at home, Kid's pc, even as a proof of concept for callcenter applications in a lab at work (can't use this officially tho since it's an unofficial "hack" of the OS. Windows Steady State was investigated instead). If there's any questions I can answer I'd be happy to share the info I've gathered from running it.

That's really my 2 cents...looks more like 25 though...

I know that was my starting point with EWF. Although the creator had thread here before he started the blog.