Windows XP running from a Compact Flash card
Posted by: Jym, in How To, Technology
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I have my car PC running XP Pro on a 4Gb CF II ripped from a Creative Labs MuVo II Mp3 player and no 2.5 hard drives installed. Its all built on a VIA MII 10000 board with an IDE / CF II converter mounted up front, along with the onboard CF II and PCMCIA slots in the back. Took some work to get it running, but I have to admit it is pretty cool once it became stable. I can pull the drive and stick it in my pocket when I leave the car and everything important goes with me. I can also swap it out for my 1Gb CF card and run Linux OS for some hard core war driving applications.
Problem I have is this; Microsoft obviously does not want us to have this ability to take our OS with us in our pocket on removable media. This is made clear soon as you try and load Office or automatic updates. When you try to install Office to a removable drive, it prompts you for the CD at completion of the install process. Yes I had the CD in the drive, but it will keep prompting you until you want to throw the system through a window.. You hit cancel and it removes the install. After some online research I found no work around only others asking similar questions Then I decided to Ghost the CF from a 2.5 drive. This works great initially. You just install your XP and applications to the 2.5 drive, then insert the CF II drive and copy the running image to it. Tricked you M$ I said.
So far so good, when I booted to the CF drive all is well and running, except for a page file. Seems once windows detects the OS on the removable drive, it can’t figure where to put it. Disabled the page file and it runs fine. Now I go to do windows automatic updates and once again M$ comes back to haunt me, “updates failed bla bla bla” . I don’t want to re-ghost my drive every time a new bug or hole shows up in their OS. I also noticed a few other apps I’ve tried to install halted when they saw C:”removable”. The system has ran stable with my current config for 3 months so I know this will work.
I’ve also tried changing drivers, BIOS settings, file systems NTFS and FAT32, changing CF cards, different versions of Windows back to 98, nothing will change the drive type from removable. Have not tried different IDE to CF adapters since this one from Ituner’s is all ready mounted in the case.
http://store.mini-box.com/ituner/cfdisk1c.html
I did find that the new MuVo II players with the 4Gb drive have the CF function disabled, this is the only thing I have not tried yet.
So what’s the fix here, is there something easy I am missing?
How can we fake XP to think this CF II drive is a standard ATA/IDE hard drive?
Has anyone else found this same problem with say a USB connected hard drive?
What about XP Embedded, anyone running it and office on a removable media?
Sorry for the length, wanted to dump it all on the table to ponder
I would like to first comment on the boot time topic. I see many people are thinking that Drivesoft system always uses XP EMB on compact flash. This is not always true. We install unit in industrial vehicle that we do use compact flash in but 99% of the multi media unit that we sell have 2.5 hard drives in them. We are getting our 6 sec boot time with XP pro and the same with XP EMB. We are using standby “STR”. When we use Hibernation we get about8 to 10 sec start up. Also when I say start up I mean when the music starts to play. A while back some software company made a comment about how we boot fast with compact flash etc but he was just assuming that. One of the reasons we boot as solid and as fast as we do even on hard drives is because we are managing driver “load and order”. This goes for shut down as well. We also write some of the drivers for the products we use which also help in standby issues etc. You should remember tat most PC product out there are all made to work on all pc’s. Once you remove the ALL word and design drivers etc that work with only your product you get better results.
Example: the new GM radios that have the LCD in the dash made by Delphi have a processor and an OS and so dose the BMW. Some is running CE. Why do they not crash like pc’s do? Only because it was designed to do certain functions. We worked on some of theses unit in GM cars with them and see why they do not have problems. We are just doing the same thing they are but on a wider scale.
Now far as your removable drive and XP issues.
Try right clicking on the drive and go to properties. Then go to the hardware tab. then highlight the drive and select properties again. Then go to the policies tab and change the setting to “Optimize for Performance”. This will also allow you to format removable media with NTFS. XP functions this way because it wants to handle removable devices fast so you do not need to click Safety Remove Hardware task first.
Hope this helps. It works for most people.
Drivesoft Support
I am seeing an intermittant issue calling the EwfMgrCommitAndDisableLive()
API then running FBReseal.exe results in an ewf.sys blue screen. Has anybody
seen something similar and have a workaround?
Did you create a custom DLL for fbreseal to call the API?
Regards,
Sean Liming
www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
XP Embedded Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded Supplemental
Toolkit.
“Tony Camilli”
news:318966A4-6A00-481D-AF17-7B2DF7AB1513@microsoft.com…
>I am seeing an intermittant issue calling the EwfMgrCommitAndDisableLive()
> API then running FBReseal.exe results in an ewf.sys blue screen. Has
> anybody
> seen something similar and have a workaround?
I created a custom DLL for fbreseal, but not to call the API. Basically what
is happening is a custom app calls the API, then spawns fbreseal.exe. The
reseal dll simply returns a no-op so that the system reboots automatically
rather than showing a dialog prompt.
Thanks,
Tony
“Sean Liming (eMVP)” wrote:
>
> Did you create a custom DLL for fbreseal to call the API?
>
> Regards,
>
> Sean Liming
> www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
> XP Embedded Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded Supplemental
> Toolkit.
>
>
> “Tony Camilli”
> news:318966A4-6A00-481D-AF17-7B2DF7AB1513@microsoft.com…
> >I am seeing an intermittant issue calling the EwfMgrCommitAndDisableLive()
> > API then running FBReseal.exe results in an ewf.sys blue screen. Has
> > anybody
> > seen something similar and have a workaround?
>
>
>
http://granturing.blogspot.com/
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/…how-to-boot-windows-xp-off-a-compact-flash-card/
Inspired by the two articles above, I decided to share my own experience building a XP PC running off Compact Flash.
Granturing’s blog covers the use of Enhanced Write Filter in Windows XP. EWF is a driver that write-protects the CF card when XP is running. Effectively, whatever changes you make to the XP after EWF is enabled will be undone upon reboot.
Will’s entry details cloning of a harddisk XP installation into a CF card. It is a good way particularly if you want a lean copy of XP.
My approach is a short-cut by directly installing XP into the CF and using EWF to make XP almost read-only.
Stuff you need
XP CD
The same stuff for any typical XP installation.
A typical Intel-based PC
May be an old PC or something that you want to experiment with…
CF-to-IDE + CF card
 |
3.5” adaptor I bought off Ebay and a speedy 4GB Sandisk Extreme III from a local shop.
Overview
1. Install CF + adaptor (remember the power cable)
2. Boot with XP CD & install as per normal
3. Turn off XP paging (Virtual Memory setting) & restore point (if any)
4. Install any other applications & drivers into the XP
5. Install & enable EWF
First 4 steps are straight forward, I shall not go into those steps. I will elaborate step 5.
Install & enable EWF
It is amazing that you need only 3 files, well 4 files including the registry settings (thanks to Granturing) to get EWF working. Click here to download & save registry file (somewhere).
Registry Settings
Open the registry file with text editor and take a look at the last portion:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ewf\Parameters\Protected\Volume0]
“Type”=dword:00000001
“ArcName”=”multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)“
It is important to get ArcName right.
Go to the boot drive of the TARGET MACHINE WITH XP INSTALLED INTO CF CARD and open up “boot.ini” . The “multi…” string (highlighted) should be the same and look something like:
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
If you can’t see boot.ini, it is likely your explorer is hiding system files. Use explorer’s Folder Option to show hidden and system files.
Copy EWF driver files
To obtain the 3 EWF files: ewf.sys (driver), ewfmgr.exe (command program to control the driver) & ewfntldr (NT loader), download XP Embedded SP2 Feature Pack 2007 ISO file
- Extract (or browse) into “rep” subfolder with your favorite tool (eg. WinRAR)
- The 3 EWF files are in “rep” subfolder
We assume now you are in your XP that is running off the CF, with paging and restore point turned off (mine did not have restore point tab) nicely.
Copy the 4 EWF files into the respective destination locationsof the XP running off CF:
ewfntldr - Backup original ntldr eg C:\ntldr.bak, rename ewfntldr to ntldr
ewf.sys - Copy to your windows SYSTEM32\DRIVERS
ewfmgr.exe - Copy to your windows directory
ewf.reg - Anywhere at the target machine
PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU COPY EWF.SYS INTO THE RIGHT PLACE!
I screwed my first installation because I copied the driver file into SYSTEM32 instead of the sub-folder “drivers”. Looking back, I could have use a multi-card reader on another machine to fix it…
Merging Registry Values
Before merging the registry settings downloaded earlier, please check that:
- ArcName is assigned correctly
- Permission is set to Full using Regedit (Start -> Run…)
For HKEY_Local_machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root
 |
Once enabled Full for Everyone, double click the registry file to merge.
Cross your fingers, reboot…
Then again, we will not see XPs very soon on fresh desktops but on UMPCs, at least for a while.
For more info, visit:
http://granturing.blogspot.com/2007/12/this-guide-is-based-off-my-original-ewf.html
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