The Windows Embedded Standard 2009 May 2011 Feature Update adds two additional applications “Enahnced Write Filter Management Tool” and “File Based Write Filter Management Tool” which allow you to monitor the status and configure the filter drivers in you images. The applications will start on the system start and appear in the systray also showing notifications when the overlays runs full. However the tools can be configured to deactivate the automatic startup too.

The new features can be downloaded from the Microsoft ECE:
Window Embedded Standard 2009 May 2011 Feature Update

The two tools have a dependency on the Write Filter WMI Providers which were released in February 2011.

The new Windows Embedded Device Manager 2011 enables you to manage all your embedded devices with a single tool.
This new tool integrates into Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and it not only allows you to deploy and update images – you can differentiate between device types. This way updates can be deployed, e.g. only to Thin Clients but not to kiosks however both device types run Windows Embedded Standard 7.

Another great feature is that Windows Embedded Device Manager 2011 is able to control the write filters which might be enabled on your devices. Normally when a system has a write filter enabled and updates are applied the updates are gone again after a reboot – this is because the filter drivers redirect all changes made to the disk into a RAM overlay which gets reset on reboot.
When deploying updates via the Device Manager the system will handle this case properly by deactivating and reactivating the filter drivers automatically.

The tool works with all Windows Embedded Standard and Ready operating systems such as:

• Windows XP Embedded
• Windows Embedded Standard 2009
• Windows Embedded Standard 7
• Windows Embedded for Point of Service
• Windows Embedded POSReady 2009

and because it is based on System Center Configuration Manager 2007 it can handle all Windows Embedded Enterprise systems as well.

More information about the tool can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/evaluate/windows-embedded-device-manager.aspx

Microsoft has created an interface for the Windows Management Instrumentation for the Enhanced Write Filter and File Based Write Filter. This feature is available for Windows Embedded Standard 2009 and Windows XP Embedded SP3. With it you can control the state and poll settings and other values through WMI. Also the goal of this is to have full control over the filters with the Windows Scripting Host.

The new features are contained in the March 2011 Update and can be found here:

Windows Embedded Standard 2009
Windows XP Embedded SP3

The Driver Injector tool allows you to find suitable drivers for your target device automatically. The tool can be a great help if you have previously extracted all driver with Driver Extractor and want to inject them again automatically. Or if you have a driver CD/DVD and want to inject all drivers automatically to the image without having to install every device manually. Driver Injector needs a Target Analyzer Output file which contains all the device information from the target device and a driver search path. Then the tool will find all matches and allows to inject them with one click.

Scenarios

Scenario #1

You have a bunch of drivers on the driver CD and need to install every driver one by one. In this case just run TAP to get the device information.

Then specify the driver search path – which is your driver CD. And click Next. Driver Injector will find the matching drivers and inject them to the image.

Scenario #2

Sometimes there are missing files but Windows will not tell you why.

When this happens you just open the INF file with the tool and it will show you all missing files.

How it works

1. Run TAP.exe from your Windows Embedded Toolkit
2. Run Driver Injector with Administrator permissions
   
3. Click Browse to select the “Target Analyzer Output (devices.pmq)” file
4. Click Browse and select a the directory which contains the drivers for you device
   Driver Injector will use all subdirectories automatically – it must not be a flat structure.
5. Select if you want to inject the drivers to the current running operating system (Online) or if you wish to inject the drivers to an image in a folder (offline).
6. Click Next
7. Driver Injector will now parse the devices.pmq file to get all the needed devices and it will parse all INF files for suitable drivers.
   
8. After the search has completed the tool will show a detailed list of devices which can be mapped with a driver.
   
   There are additional details which are being displayed for each device match:
   
   
   - [ExactMatch] means that the device driver is a 1:1 match with the device ID.
   - [CompatibleMatch] means that the device driver does not match the exact device ID – however it matches with one of its compatible IDs. Therefore it can be used without any problem.
   
   The second information within the brackets shows the hardware architecture of the device driver. You cannot select a device driver if the hardware architecture does not match the operating systems architecture.
9. Select all device drivers which you want to inject into your image. Driver Injector already preselected the best matches.
10. Click Next.
    
11. Driver Injector will now copy all the needed driver files to the appropriate directories.
    In case you have specified another Windows\inf directory as a search directory the directory will not contain the needed driver files. In this case Driver Injector will ask you if it should extract the drivers from installed Windows directory.
    Please note that this feature can not ensure that the correct files are being used. This is because some driver files are renamed during the installation process. It can happen during the extraction routine that some files are the wrong files because the source Windows directory had another device driver component installed which has the same filename (Example: hal.inf contains multiple hal.dll files. All of them are named hal.dll during the installation. However the original names are different from device to device, e.g. halacpi.dll, halapic.dll,…).
12. After the process has completed you will get a detailed summary.
    

Additional Features

Explore INF File

Driver Injector also allows to explore the content of an INF file. This feature will also display all missing files which are needed to install the driver properly. Missing files can happen on a Windows Embedded system in case not all components are installed but the driver depends on them. Missing files are being highlighted automatically by the tool.

How it works

1. Start Driver Injector and select “Explore INF File”.
   
2. Click “Next”.
3. Browse for the INF file which you would like to explore.
   
4. Driver Injector will now display all devices which are contained in the INF file.
   The tool will show all related files, registry entries, services and compatible IDs that are needed by a device.
   To display these items just expand the device node.
   The device items description shows additional information between brackets:
   - The first information shows the device ID – compatible IDs (if there are any) are shown in the Compatible node.
   - The second information shows the architecture of the device.
5. Highlighted items display missing but required files to install a device properly.
   

Add additional information during driver selection

During the driver selection screen you can also add additional information to the selected device.
For this just select the device and click “Load Details”. Drive Injector will then add information about files, registry entries and services that are installed by the device. It will also highlight missing files.

To explore the whole INF file of an selected device driver just click “Explore INF”. Driver Injector will the open a new window displaying the whole content of an inf file. For more information read the “Explore INF File” section.

Command Line Arguments

Driver Injector can run unattended with the following parameters:

DriverInjector.exe <devices.pmq> <DriverSearchPath> [OfflineImagePath]

If the [OfflineImagePath] is omitted then the current running OS will be modified.

Driver Injector can also be started to explore an INF file by using the following parameter:

DriverInjector.exe <INFFile.inf>

 

On ECE you can now download Silverlight 4 for Windows Embedded Standard 2009 and Windows Embedded Standard 7.

Silverlight is a free .NET powered plug-in for browsers, devices and operating systems which allows to create powerful and interactive user experiences.

Download for Windows Embedded Standard 2009
Download for Windows Embedded Standard 7

Microsoft has released the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 component for XP Embedded.

.NET 3.5 SP1 is available as setup component that includes the installation and its required dependencies.
Customer should use the newest version of .NET to ensure the availability of support after April 12, 2011.

Download

Microsoft has released the August 2010 Update for Windows Embedded Standard 2009 which contains the following new features and tools:

• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0
  includes a component with the .NET 4.0 installer and its dependencies
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Express Prerequisites
  Macro Component which contains all the needed dependencies to install SQL Server 2008 R2 Express
• Web Services on Devices API for .NET
  Web Services on Devices for .NET supports the implementation of client-controlled devices and services and device hosts conforming to specifications for typical embedded environments. WSDAPI for .NET can be used for the development of both client and service solutions based on the DPWS stack. WSDAPI for .NET can be used for the development of both client and service solutions based on the DPWS stack.
• Windows Embedded Standard 2009 SLD Export Tool
  The SLD Export Tool is designed to help developers to search for resources and update resources in SLD files.
  It exports the SLD files to Microsoft Excel with the following resources:
  - File
  - Registry Key
  - Dependencies
  
  Additionally the tool support updating the SLD file according to the modified Excel file.

The download and more information is available on the ECE.

If you load pptx files using PowerPoint Viewer 2007 on XP Embedded or Windows Embedded Standard 2009 you will get the following error message:

“This file requires the Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office system to view its contents”

The reason for this error message is that PowerPoint Viewer 2007 needs the t2embed.dll located in the Windows\system32 directory.

To solve the error copy the t2embed.dll from a XP Professional system to your embedded system.

The free Microsoft utility Windows SteadyState can be used on Windows XP Professional for Embedded Systems to prevent the OS from any changes.

It offers a write filter which will redirect all writes to a cache file which can be reset on a reboot. This will generate a fresh system on every boot.

Windows Updates can be installed even when the write protection is on. Additional security policies can be applied on the system using SteadyState.

Download a manual for the installation and configuration from our website

Per default user accounts will expire in Windows XP Embedded and Windows Embedded Standard.
To avoid this you can run the following commands for each user created:

net accounts /maxpwage:unlimited
net users Username /expires:never
net users Username /active:yes