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Available Now - Order your Windows Embedded Standard 7 NOW!You can start to order your Windows Embedded Standard licenses today!
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Windows Embedded Standard 7 - E and P versionsWindows Embedded Standard 7 is available in two different license versions. The binaries of both versions are completely the same but depending on which features your image is using you will need to buy a different license for Windows Embedded Standard 7. You can find a full list of which features are available in which version here: |
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Media Center
Now you can use the full Windows Media Center experience on your device. Microsoft has released Windows Media Center as a Feature Pack allowing you to boot directly into the Media Center application and make fully usage of all its features including: Live-TV, EPG, Medialibraries, Addin-System, ... The Windows Media Center is included in the P license of Windows Embedded Standard 7. |
Building a Media Device?
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CompatibilityWindows Embedded Standard is fully compatible to Windows 7 Ultimate. This means that any program or driver that runs on Windows 7 Ultimate will run on Windows Embedded Standard without modification. The only important thing to ensure is that the needed dependencies are included in the image. However the Static Dependency Analyzer in the Image Configuration Editor can be a great help to find the needed Feature Packages. |
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Synchronous and Asynchronous CommandsThe Image Configuration Editor allows the possibility to run synchronous and/or asynchronous commands during various phases of the image creation process. With these commands you can deploy custom applications, settings or simply copy or delete files. These commands can run in the following phases of the image creation process:
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Driver Integration
In the next step IBW will search for fitting drivers in the default driver set of Windows 7. Additionally it is possible to add drivers regardless if they were found during driver enumeration. This is helpfull if there are devices on a bus system which has no driver loaded during enumeration. If this happens IBW cannot find devices on that bus. If you add the drivers during setup time, the created image will install the drivers correctly after the first boot. With this option you can preload all needed drivers into your image. An easy solution for this is to put all needed drivers into a directory on a USB drive. During setup time you can easily select this folder to include all drivers to the image. Windows will then load all needed drivers automatically. |
During the setup the Image Build Wizard will execute the Target Analyzer in the background to retrieve the information about which hardware is available in the device.
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Bitlocker To Go
Bitlocker To Go provides the powerful encryption of Bitlocker also for removable devices. This way you can use encrypted USB drives which can only be accessed from your Embedded system. |
Windows Embedded Standard also includes Bitlocker To Go.
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Automated Image Updates with VHD BootIf you are planning to use VHDs on your new device you can implement an automated image update for your device. All you need to do is to create two different VHDs - one containing only the operating system - and the other one contains the data for your application. If you have set up your system like this you can implement a program which does the following:
This way the new image will automatically boot up - if there is a problem with the new image you can easily revert back to the previous one by selecting the old version in the bootmenu. You can use the free tool BootVHD to ease the VHD registration in the bootmanager. |
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SysprepWith Windows Embedded Standard you can use Sysprep to generalize your image and use it as master for deployment. Sysprep can be used like on a normal Windows 7 pc to install additional drivers, software, etc. to you image and then remove all the unique id and data to prepare the image for deployment. After sysprep has been executed the system will come up with OOBE (Out-Of-The-Box-Experience) Wizard which lets the end user configure user account, network location, etc. OOBE can also be supressed by creating an answer file for sysprep.
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Base ImageWindows Embedded Standard contains a Base Image with an estimated footprint of 600MB which includes the minimum functionality of Windows 7. The base image already contains base functionality like device driver installation, event logging. All other features can be added and/or removed during the installation with Image Builder Wizard and/or DISM (or DISMUI). |
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Installation from USB
If your device supports booting from USB the Image Build Wizard will start directly from your USB drive.
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Windows Embedded offers the ability to boot the Image Build Wizard directly from your USB drive. In case your device does not have a DVD drive you can easily format any USB drive with a primary active partition to the NTFS file format and copy over the Image Build Wizard files.
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List ViewImage Build Wizard offer two different appearances to select the feature packages. Tree View
In the tree view all features packages are grouped by their common use - e.g. .NET Frameworks are in the .NET Framework group. List View The list view will display all feature packages in a sorted list. This will help you to find specific feature packages if you don't know in which group they are located. You can switch between both views on the fly by just selecting the link ("Switch to...") above the view box in the feature package selection screen.
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.NET Framework - Client ProfileThe .NET Framework is now split into the full version of the framework and the client profile. The full version of the framework includes all assemblies to ensure maximum compatibility however the size of the framework is also big. If you need a small footprint and your application does not need all features of the framework you can use the .NET Framework Client Profile. The client profile is a subset of the full .NET Framework which has a much lower footprint but still offers the most important assemblies.
To check if your application can run using the client profile please have a look at the following website:
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Enhanced Firewall
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Windows contains now a powerful firewall which can be configured more granular than the XP version. It even supports multiple setups depending on the devices location. A policy can be setup to be applied only for a Private, Public or Domain network. Depending on wheter the device is located to one of the 3 network types the correct firewall policy gets enforced.
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Dependency CheckThe Image Build Wizard (IBW) and also the Image Configuration Editor (ICE) offer a dependency check which ensures that all necessary feature packs are included in the image. Dependencies are split into needed dependencies which must be included to make the image run properly and optional dependencies which can be left out. The dependency check now takes only a few seconds and is much faster than in Target Designer. This impovment is because of the new structure and the use of the Distribution Share instead of a hughe database. |
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Sensor APIWindows includes native support for senors which allows you to easily access sensors and respond to their data. For example you can easily hook up a brightness sensor to respond to the current lighting in your application or hook up a GPS sensor to get exact location data of your device.
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Static Dependency Analyzer
This is now much easier because the Image Configuration Editor offers a new tool called the Static Dependency Analyzer which automatically adds the necessary feature packages to the image. You can specify an executable (EXE) or Microsoft Installer file (MSI) to check for the dependencies. The rest is done automatically by the Static Dependency Analyzer.
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Finding dependencies has always been hard in previous embedded version. Tools like Dependency Walker helped to find necessary DLLs which could then be searched in the Target Designer to add the necessary component.
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OEM Folder
For example you can use $OEM$\$$ to put files to the Windows directory and/or use $OEM$\$1 to place files in the systems root.
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Because of the new deployment of Windows Embedded, which is similar to a regular Windows (XP, 7,...) deployment you can now also make use of the OEM Folder structure to copy customization to the target system.
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No Product Activation
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As with previous Windows Embedded versions (XPe, WES2009, POSReady,..) the new Windows Embedded version will not require Windows Activation.| 20 |
Graphical User Interface for DISM
You can find this tool and other tools for Windows Embeded for free in our Windows Embedded Tools area: www.elbacom.com/embedded/tools
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DISM is a command line tool which allows you to modify your Windows image even after deployment. However using the command line is not very comfortbale. Therefore we have created a tool called DISM UI which allows you to use a graphical wizard which looks similar to the Image Build Wizard to modify your runtime image. All you need to do with the tool is to uncheck the packages which you want to remove and check the packages you wish to add. The rest is done by DISM UI.
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TemplatesImage Build Wizard allows the use of Templates. There are several predefined templates available which allows you to easily create a Windows image with preselected features. You can also create templates which you can use as starting base for several device groups. Lets assume you have different device groups which should contain specific feature packages but some devices should have additional feature packages. If this is the case you can create an answer file for each device group in the Image Configuration Editor. This answer file can then be selected using the Browse button below the Templateselection in the Image Build Wizard. If you click on "Modify Features" in the next step you can add the needed features packages afterwards.
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USB Boot
A modified USB Driver allows you to boot Windows directly from a USB drive. The USB Boot driver ensures that the USB driver is loaded earlier to allow access to the USB drive. This way Windows can boot successfully. You can even combine USB Boot with VHD Boot to load your complete system from just one file on your USB drive! |
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Hibernate Once Resume Many (HORM)If you have protected your device using the Enhanced Write Filter you can make use of another great feature which optimizes your boot time.
With enabled Hibernate Once Resume Many (HORM) and enabled Enhanced Write Filter you put your device into hibernation mode once. |
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Registry FilterRegistry Filter is also available in the new Windows Embedded version. This filter allows you to create exclusion in the HKLM key of the Windows Registry even if the Enhanced Write Filter or the File Based Write Filter is enabled. The Registry Filter is important if you use EWF or FBWF to protect you device which is in a domain environment. Normally your device would loose the trust to the domain after some time because Windows cannot persist the domain key in the Windows Registry. With Registry Filter you can solve this issue by specifying that the domain key will still be persistet even if a filter driver is enabled. |
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File Based Write FilterThe File Based Write Filter (FBWF) is the second filter driver which is available in the new Windows Embedded version. The difference between Enhanced Write Filter (EWF) and File Based Write Filter is that the FBWF works on a higher level than the EWF. Therefore FBWF has knowledge of the filesystem which enables you to make exclusions on file and folder base.
Generally FBWF redirects all the writes into a RAM overlay - this way you image is protected from any changes. However you can create exclusions to allow writes directrly to the disk.
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Custom Shell
Windows allows youu to use your application as shell. This is the best way to customize your device and boot directly into your application.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon] |
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Custom Windows Logon
The Windows Logon screen can now use a custom image as background. This image is chosen by Windows depending on the screen resolution. The custom wallpaper can be specified by setting up a single policy. |
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Enhanced Write Filter
Windows XP Embedded introduced a low-level filter driver called Enhanced Write Filter (EWF) which redirects all writes to a RAM overlay. This way the image is sealed and secured from any changed.
With the new version of EWF the overlay size can be much bigger than in the previous version. On a 64-Bit system it could theoretically be up to 128 GB!
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Dialog BlockerWindows XP Embedded had an Embedded Enabling Feature called MessageBox AutoReply. This features filtered all MessageBoxes before they appeared on the screen and commited them using the default button. The problem with this feature is that not all unwanted messages that could appear are MessageBoxes. Therefore Microsoft introduced a new Embedded Enabling Feature called Dialog Blocker. With Dialog Blocker you can block all kinds of windows (MessageBoxes, Task Dialogs, Windows, ...). The configuration can be done via a graphical editor where you can specify a list of unwanted windows by entering either the window title or the classname of a window. |
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Speech - Text To Speech and Speech Recognition
With Text-To-Speech you can easily implement professional TTS applications with a wide range of available SAPI voices. The improved speech recognition engine allows you to control Windows and your applications completely per voice. |
Windows Embedded included a powerful API to implement speech services.
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F1 - HelpBoth Embedded Tools - the Image Build Wizard and the Image Configuration Editor offer a extensive help for each Feature Pack. Just press F1 at any time to open the context related help. The documentation also offers samples how to use the tools.
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Windows Update
Now with the newest Embedded version Windows Update is supported. This is possible because Windows Update knows which features are installed and only fetches update for these components! Devices can now directly connect to Microsoft Update to retrieve the latest security updates for Windows.
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Previous Embedded versions of Windows (e.g. XP Embedded, Windows Embedded Standard 2009) did not support using Windows Update. The reason for this was that Windows did not know which components are included and which not. Therefore it could happen that there is an update for a component which is not included in the image and it fails and renders Windows Update useless.
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Deployment Image Servicing and Management Tool
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Full Control with Image Configuration Editor
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Feature PackagesOther than in previous embedded versions of Windows you now have about 150 Feature Packages which you can choose to add to your Embedded OS. A Feature Package is for example Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, .NET Framework 2.0, etc. The installation process with Features Packages is now much easier because they ensure that the selected feature will work without a problem. Feature Packages also offer additional features - those will be anounced here soon!
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Image Builder Wizard and VHD Boot
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A new setup experience with Image Build Wizard
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Differential VHDs
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VHD Boot offers an additional benefit: Differential VHDs. This way you can setup a Windows environment which is located in a master VHD file. All the changes (writes) to the image will be stored in a seperate VHD file (differential VHD) so the master image itself never gets changed. You can use this for example if you use a flash device where your master image is stored and a HDD which stores the differential VHD to increase the lifetime of the flash device. Also you could setup a PE system which will periodically erases the differential VHD file and recreates it to undo all the changes and use a fresh image all the time.
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VHD Boot
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SSD AwareIf you used flash storage devices in previous versions of Windows you had to deactivate a couple of background services to turn off unnecessary write operations to the flash. This is no longer necessary as Windows will recognize a drive as a flash storage device and will automatically disable not necessary writes which will increase performance and also increase the lifetime of the flash storage device itself. |
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Support for up to 128GB of RAM
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64-Bit
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MultiTouch
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DirectAccessDirectAccess automatically connects your device to the corporate network whenever internet is available. There is no need to dial in via VPN anymore - the connection to the corporate network will be established even before a user logs on. With DirectAccess enabled you can administrate your device whenever it has internet access - you can easily access it like any pc on the local network. 
To use DirectAccess you will need Windows Server 2008 R2. |
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Language Packs
There will be 36 language packs available for Windows. Windows itself is language neutral and can be translated in the language you need on the fly by installing the approperiate language pack. Also a switch between languages is possible with few clicks during runtime.
Windows is translated 100% into the available language packs and there will not be any English strings anywhere in the system. |
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Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL)-independentBeginning with Windows Vista you can maintain a single Windows image that applies to all HAL types. There is no need to create special images for single core and multi cores - Windows will automatically select the approperiate HAL for your system at boot. However, you will need to maintain different images for different processor architectures (32-bit and 64-bit platforms). |
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AppLocker
Prevent unwanted applications to run on your Embedded device with AppLocker by setting up Blacklists or Whitelist of applications. 3 ways to configure your Blacklist/Whitelist:
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Bitlocker
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