Thread: Latest instructions on XP/EWF/CF please

Originally Posted by faberz

does anyone have aim, who could give me a little more info on this, i tried reading and i have a somewhat understanding of how it works, but for some reason i just cant seem to understand if i should install window embedded in my regular computer and then everything is going to get transferred on to the cf and placed in my carputer or should it all be done on the actual carputer my aim is aimfaberz hit me up if you have some time so i can get a better understanding of this. thanks everyone in advance

You should install a full Windows Xp version on your carputer mb (use an hd in this phases), then run tap.exe on it to have a full devices description.
Then you can work on your regular computer using "Component Database
Manager" and "Target Designer" from Microsoft Windows Embedded Studio
Microsoft.
Once created the image of your target carputer you con copy on hd to
speed up FBA. After you installed all needed sw you can copy all on a cf.
There some intermediate steps you need to do...

Let me know,
Gianni

Does a CF need to be formatted with FAT16 to boot? Or does FAT32 work? I have a SanDisk Extreme III 4gig that I'm planning to boot with. My first try with XP didn't work though, won't boot.

FAT32 is fine

Originally Posted by Machinist

List of flash media cards I have confirmed to boot XPe with:

note: I have not yet found a CF card that was not able to boot XPe.

Transcend Industrial CF with Fixed Disk UDMA4 2GB (TS2GCF45I-D) - this one formatted NTFS using an XP CD, definitely one of the fastest FBA, boot, and operation in comparison to the other cards I have tested so far. I did the FBA through the Addonics IDE to CF Adapter, but afterwards I ran the card using the Addonics SATA to CF Adapter without problems. I assumed prior to doing this that I would come across device driver related issues, but there was none. I was unable to notice any difference in terms of speed compared to my 2.5" IDE drive, though HD Tach benchmarks showed otherwise.

A-DATA CF Turbo 8GB 120x - this one was detected Removable, I just did fdisk -> format -> bootprep and copied contents over. This one was slow speed

SanDisk CF 512MB - removable, fdisk -> format -> bootprep, slowest speed

SanDisk CF 4GB - removable, fdisk -> format -> bootprep, slowest speed

Transcend 4GB 120x(TS4GCF120) - this one was Fixed Disk - able to be formatted as both NTFS and FAT32 through regular means.

SanDisk Ultra II 4GB - removable, fdisk -> format -> bootprep, slow speed

SanDisk 256MB SD Card - removable, fdisk -> format -> bootprep, I used the Addonics flash media to IDE adapter for this one(capable of dma!). FBA was slow, but bootup was very fast. The Windows loading screen only loaded 3/4 of the bar before the Welcome Screen showed. I can't imagine the speed with a faster SD card.

Seagate 4GB 3600RPM MicroDrive - removable, fdisk -> format -> bootprep, high speed image transfer and Hd Tach benchmarks but slow FBA. A noticable lag time for applications.

Hi,

Thanks for this one, had to register to this forum also.. I've been running my nlited winxp mediacenter machine with a-data 120x cf, fat formatted, pagefile disabled, ewf and so on for a while.
After reading this: http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html i'm planning to put cf cards to use with my desktop machine also. Probably with 2 transcend 120x 2GB cards on a raid. I bought 2 gigs more ram, total of 4GB so i could put pagefile to ramdisk as i want to have pagefile on my desktop machine. And i do understand that for example cf cards 80% filled migth mean that transcend cards write endurance could drop. Those cards have spesification of 1 000 000 erase/write cycles. I think cf cards last like long enough if i dont use ewf but disable indexing service, ntfs last accesed and so on. Does anyone (dis)agree?

Does anyone have any experience on a Kingston cf cards? Brand sounds quite good.

Problem is that Kingston always has removable CF cards. They also don't have any UDMA cards, their fastest card right now is only 133x.

I really suggest that instead of setting up RAID with the 120x, use the Transcend 266x CF card instead. The 266x is the best CF card I have used yet. The pricing is almost identical to the 120x, yet it has more than double the transfer rate. It is great for booting, it can format NTFS, create RAID, hibernate works, and it is faster than the Extreme IV. The XP boot was ridiculously fast. The Windows loading screen didn't even get to begin the progress bar. I tested the time for a reboot timing from desktop to desktop, and it was about 20 seconds with that previous target machine. If you're coming from an A-Data 120x, you will definitely be amazed by this card.

I've been testing booting from a Transcend 150x SD card, and the boot is just as fast compared to the Transcend 120x CF. To answer your question about the program/erase cycles, with EWF enabled you could even set the hardware locked write protect on the SD card and still function perfectly fine. Of course, you wouldn't be able to commit any changes to the SD card, but it just shows that you can operate your system without writing to the drive at all. If you don't use EWF, I suppose you could use FAT, disabling a load of services, system restore and all that, but I wouldn't really recommend it for your desktop system.

Originally Posted by giovgall

run tap.exe on it to have a full devices description.
Then you can work on your regular computer using "Component Database
Manager" and "Target Designer" from Microsoft Windows Embedded Studio
Microsoft.
Once created the image of your target carputer you con copy on hd to
speed up FBA. After you installed all needed sw you can copy all on a cf.
There some intermediate steps you need to do...

Does anyone have full instructions for this?
Where do you find tap.exe?

Any tutorials for the Component Database Manager and Target Designer?

From my understanding, all we need to do is install WinXP on a HD, install all necessary software, then copy everything into the target CF card while booted on a different OS. I also assume that this needs to be done on the target computer (because you need to install the video drivers, via4in1 etc). Is this right?

Check out MSDN for full instructions:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms940811.aspx

XPe works differently from WinXP. You would run tap.exe to identify devices on your target machine, then you would be build the image from software installed on your development machine, then you transfer the files onto the hard drive (after it is properly formatted).

For standard XP that method you specified is correct.

Wouldn't it be faster to use that 4 gigs of ram and turn off the pagefile? I get away with no pagefile with 2 gigs with no problems, unless I'm running Photoshop or some ram-hungry games. My carpc runs fine w/o a pagefile with 512 megs ram.

Originally Posted by crooper

Wouldn't it be faster to use that 4 gigs of ram and turn off the pagefile? I get away with no pagefile with 2 gigs with no problems, unless I'm running Photoshop or some ram-hungry games. My carpc runs fine w/o a pagefile with 512 megs ram.

My media center also works fine with 512 or 1024 and pf disabled. Some applications/games just doesn't seem to work without pagefile enabled nevertheless how much ram i have and even if half of it is not in any use. Or at least used to do so, and as i'm constructing desktop machine i like not to think whether thats the problem or not. Ram sticks are so cheap that this makes sense.