Thread: Using EWF on regular WinXP

What I'm thinking for my setup is that the system should run fine even without the external drive. So GPS, FM, XM, and DVD will still work. Just no MP3's or MPEG's. Then I would have a harddrive MP3 player with USB connection and that would act as my external drive. That way I only need to keep my music files on one device. Ideally, the frontend should identify when you connect a new removable device and either ask you or automagically search the drive for files and store the DB on the root of the device. When you reconnect a device that has already been "initialized" by the frontend it'll just load the DB from that device. It's just a thought for right now, but that's what I'd like my system to do. Unfortunately my 2.5" drive went to **** so I had to send it to hitachi to get it fixed.

That's a pretty good idea.
Have a db file at the root of the folder for the media. When the frontend finds that db, load it. That way you won't have all these songs on your screen when you don't have the files. Good thinking.
Frodo? any other front end devs? You'll be my hero if you implement this.

so once you hibernate for the first time - it will always resume from that point. correct?? so what happens when i shut down my carpc will playing a song in frodo, it wont resume from that point?

Using HORM (hibernate once, resume many) you're creating a snapshot and you'll always resume to that point (unless you hibernate again). Now, if you install frodoplayer on a writeable drive then I guess it should resume the song. I'm not sure how frodoplayer works, but in Windows you can capture the resume power event so then your app can decide what to do. I'm guessing frodoplayer captures that event and reads from its config what it was doing before shutdown. I don't know, I'm just guessing. This is something we'll have to test. I'm currently working on another XPe component (besides minlogon) so I haven't had much time to mess with any frontends using minlogon and EWF.

Researching EWF at school, I found this
Useful for controlling EWF programatically, through the API's. In this page I found the source code to the ewfmgr (or something extremely similar) Along with the (Visual Studio .NET 2k3) code to check the status and information of EWF protected volumes.

Yeah, I actually mentioned that briefly in one of my first posts. One of the things I need to research is the ability to commit a single file. I think EWF can do this without disabling protection, so this may be the answer to frontend config files. But I need to look into it a bit more. If this does work then frontend's could support EWF by using the EWFAPI to save their config files before shutdown.

Two questions about HORM: After implementing HORM, does that mean I can cut power to the PC at any time and it'll still resume as if everything was just fine?

Also, reading the design considerations for EWF here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...ibernation.asp
It states that HORM can cause inconsistances with volumes not protected by EWF since any changes to those volumes won't be recorded at the next resume. So after a few updates to a media HD for example, one should re-hibernate to keep the hiberfil.sys up to date?

Yes, with HORM you can just switch it on and off as you like. That's how I've been running my system. I haven't seen any of those problems they're talking about. I think if you disable write caching you're fine. It's kind of like when XP complains that you unplug a removable drive without using their little "Safely remove device" applet. That's so it flushes the buffer to the drive, but if you disable caching it's not a problem. Just go to drive properties, hardware, properties, profiles (i think that's what it is), and select quick removal option. I don't plan to do much writing to my usb drive in the car so I don't think it'll be a problem for me.

Hey guys... I got my CF card last night and started working to install my OS on it. After spending all last night and most of today fighting with it, it seems that my CF->IDE adapter is a POS (piece of ****). DAMN!!! I've been able to boot to DOS using a USB card reader (damn fast too!!), but this IDE adapter is just completely random. It'll work one time, not the next, slow the system to a crawl, cause hard crashes, all kinds of good stuff. I ordered another adapter from logic supply over night. I hope it gets here tomorrow!!!