Using minLogon to speed up booting and decrease footprint - Page 4

egeekial · 12-08-2004, 08:39 PM

So what other components of XP Embedded can we integrate into XP Pro to improve boot times?
So far we have EWF and minlogin... that's a great start!

SFiorito · 12-08-2004, 08:51 PM

Hey guys, I'm glad this is working out for you as well!!! Check my post in the EWF thread about my final install on a CF card!!

MinLogon should work on any XP install period. Regarding activation... well, you'll probably figure out, but that's as far as I'll go. I researched MinLogon soley for footprint and faster boot times.

There's a few more things I want to work on: RAM drives, no not EWF, but actual RAM drives so that the OS is loaded into your RAM and runs diskless. I don't think this would be useful for a car pc since it's going to be slow to boot up, but it should be interesting none the less. The major issue is with getting as small an XP as possible because the whole OS will reside in RAM along with any RAM the OS needs to use. Luckily nLite installs don't use much RAM to begin with and people have been getting them down in size quite a bit. This would allow for XP running off a USB key for instance. The next is researching the EWF API to see what cool things we could do with it to allow for easier updating of the drive without having to do the EWFMgr shuffle (i.e. -commitanddisable -live, -enable, reboot).

mpattonm · 12-09-2004, 11:14 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by egeekial

So what other components of XP Embedded can we integrate into XP Pro to improve boot times?
So far we have EWF and minlogin... that's a great start!

I would put the question different way:
what else we can delete from WindowsXP knowing what XPE components cosist of.
For example: Do you use explorer shell "My Documents" extension? No? Then delete mydocs.dll and its corresponding registry keys (I am only using search in regedit, but I am about to find out registry keys in XPE repositories to save me some time :-). Yes, its that easy :-)

SFiorito · 12-09-2004, 11:17 AM

After looking at the EWF API it looks like you can indeed commit a specific file, but only if the size doesn't change. If you commit even if the file increased or decreased in size you run the risk of corrupting your volume.

egeekial · 12-10-2004, 05:58 PM

So how can we slipstream all this into a fresh install? Is it possible with nLite?

arise360 · 12-11-2004, 08:13 PM

1Gig CF CARD (414MB used)
Windows XP Pro SP1
Nlite ISO install
minLogon
EWF

BOOT TIME: 10SEC!

will boot vis cut that down?

OdysseyPC · 12-11-2004, 08:51 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by arise360

will boot vis cut that down?

Doubt it, it's only for profiling boot times.

arise360 · 12-11-2004, 09:21 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by OdysseyPC

Doubt it, it's only for profiling boot times.

thats what I thought.

any other Ideas on how to speed it up?

frodobaggins · 12-11-2004, 10:55 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by OdysseyPC

Doubt it, it's only for profiling boot times.

Don't listen to Microsoft's bull****. Bootvis DOES reduce boot times.

Maukio · 12-11-2004, 11:03 PM

Hmmm, I'm having problems similar to the earlier dude. I followed the instructions exactly. I ran into a problem with Windows File Protection. I didn't get any kind of message or pop-up that alerted me about Windows File Protection (no window to hit cancel on). But I noticed that when I came back to the System32 directory, after going to where I had minlogin stored to copy it, winlogon.exe, which had been deleted, was back. I found a place online that showed me how to disable Windows File Protection, I tested it out and it worked. Then I continued with the minlogon instructions. I checked to make sure and it was 17KBs. I imported the registry key after deleting everything. Once I finished all that I rebooted and the classic login screen popped up. I tried logging in with my user name (no password) and it the screen would go away and just have a blue background, it would wait a few seconds, then the login screen would pop back up. After that I tried using my Administrator account and password, this produced a bit different results. The login screen disappeared, I got the blue background again, but this time the Windows login sound played (which I previously had disabled), but about 2 seconds after it finished, the shutdown song played and the login screen popped backup. Anybody have any ideas?

knubile · 12-11-2004, 11:37 PM

Quote:

1Gig CF CARD (414MB used)
Windows XP Pro SP1
Nlite ISO install
minLogon
EWF

BOOT TIME: 10SEC!

Any idea what that boot time is on a regular drive? I have the same setup on a laptop drive booting in 35 seconds.

IntellaWorks · 12-12-2004, 12:25 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by arise360

1Gig CF CARD (414MB used)
Windows XP Pro SP1
Nlite ISO install
minLogon
EWF

BOOT TIME: 10SEC!

will boot vis cut that down?

Post your boot vis, log file. What speed is your computer ? (Ram, ram clock speed, cpu cpu bus ? )

Bootvis is from microsoft and says it can increase boot times by 2-3 seconds... it does this by optomizeing the drive... which you can do manually..

frodobaggins · 12-12-2004, 03:08 AM

I have the CTRL-ALT-DEL problem solved.
Gimme a minute.

frodobaggins · 12-12-2004, 04:05 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by frodobaggins

I have the CTRL-ALT-DEL problem solved.
Gimme a minute.

Ok I got it all working nicely. I'm too tired to pack it all up
and release tonight, but as soon as I have time tomorrow I'll
post up the solution and instructions.

Frodo

FetLyd · 12-12-2004, 04:45 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by egeekial

So how can we slipstream all this into a fresh install? Is it possible with nLite?

Should be possible.. I tried replacing winlogon.ex_ in the i386 folder, before building the iso.. everything installed ok, but left me with an BSOD at the first boot..

Guess XP needs some stuff in orig. winlogon at the first boot, but I'll have to give it a few more tries.. I'll keep you updated!