Talk:Windows XP Embedded

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[edit] Some non-sensical / readily available information

This article seemed rather shorter than last time I saw it, so I checked the history and found another editor had deleted more than half the text, with the following rationalle: Removed non-sensical / readily available information duplicated from existing sources

I know this stuff is not exactly gold, and I'm not bold enough to reinsert it into the article, but I thought I would repost it here, since I feel it does contain worthwhile info which could be worked back in. I've not posted the Embedded Enabling Feature Descriptions section since this may have been an MSDN copyvio. Linton 02:48, 1 February 2006 (UTC)


The XPe Developers kit (also called Windows Embedded Studio) consists of:

  • Embedded Development tools (Target Designer, Component Designer, etc.)
  • A SQL database of all the component/binary/registry dependency information for XP Pro
  • A repository of all the binaries that comprise the entire XP Pro OS
  • Embedded Enabling Technologies (apps and drivers that allow Windows to run in embedded environments, these are a "Value Add" when compared to XP Pro)

The kit will allow the developer to customize the Windows OS by picking and choosing which of 1,000 Windows features and 9,000+ Windows drivers to include. The smallest bootable runtime you can create with most Win32 API support is about 4MB. Although this would not have a networking stack or video, it could perhaps be useful for a serial control device. As you add more windows features to the runtime, the number of dependencies increases which results in a larger "footprint". As an example, if you don't want Internet Explorer in the runtime, simply don't add the IE component to the configuration you build with the XPe development tools. If you do add IE to the configuration then all of its dependencies also come in to the configuration automatically which increases the ultimate size of the footprint.

The Primary development tools the developer uses the most are Target Designer and Component Designer. Target Designer (TD) is for adding, removing and tweaking various components in a configuration. With it one can display all the resources that are "owned" by the components in ones configuration, add Windows components (or custom hardware drivers or third party applications) and build a configuration which results in a bootable mini version of XP.

Component Designer is used to build or view custom components for third party apps or drivers, for converting INF based drivers to a format that can be imported into the SQL database along side all the Windows components.

XPe doesn't use Windows Setup. It uses a feature called First Boot Agent (FBA). Since most of the setup is done offline in Target Designer by prepopulating items such as registry keys, hardware information for PnP or custom shell settings and bin placing all files in advance, there is no need to go through the Windows XP Setup, so FBA is used to process the few items 'online' that couldn't be done 'offline' by Target Designer. After FBA is complete, the embedded device is ready for use or cloning or further customization.

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