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        Chat transcript answers questions about Windows Embedded Standard

        Jonathan Angel | Date: Jul 8, 2008 | Comments: 1


        Microsoft's MSDN developer website has published an interesting transcript of a Jun. 17 online chat devoted to the Windows Embedded Standard (WES) Community Technology Preview.

        In the chat, a dozen different Microsoft engineers and program managers were available to answer questions from developers.

        The chat concerned the downloadable beta version -- termed a CTP (community technology preview) by Microsoft -- of Windows Embedded Standard (WES) that was released last month. Available as a fully functional DVD .ISO image, the CTP release uses the Windows XP Embedded codebase but adds Service Pack 3 (SP3) upgrades, Vista-style Network Access Protection (NAP), Silverlight, .NET Framework 3.5, Remote Desktop 6.1, and other new features. (For more details, see our earlier coverage, here.)

        Questions in the chat -- fielded by a dozen of Microsoft's program managers and software developers -- began with some general background information, as follows:
        • When will Windows Embedded Standard (WES) officially be released?

        • What are the hardware requirements for WES?

        • What is Microsoft's official stand on support for both Windows XP Embedded (XPe) and WES?

        • If I purchase a Windows XPe platform development kit, will I get a free upgrade to Windows Embedded Standard?

        • Apart from more macros what other differences are under the bonnet over the XPe tool set? How do I justify asking my boss for another $1000 for another tool very similar to the one I already have?

        • Will WES have the same activation requirements as XP Embedded?
        In addition, many other questions went into greater technical depth, including the following:
        • If I have an XPe SLD, will I just be able to import it into WES?

        • When I ran Target Analyzer on a base Windows XP machine with Windows XP Embedded and again with Windows Embedded Standard, each generated a different number of components needed to install -- is this normal?

        • What is Windows PE??

        • When WES is released will it have a component for .NET 3.5 SP1?

        • Is there a tool to compare 2 SLX files and output the different components?

        • Will WES include a component for supporting Visual C++ VS2008 programs?

        • On our current product we have a Linux partition and want to save backups of the image. Does Microsoft have any plans for providing a backup tool?

        • For my application, I need to load about 50 individual components. Is there any way to run a batch file in the component manager so that I dont have to add each component separately?

        • Is there an technical article that covers migrating custom components created pre-WES into WES?

        • I have seen that after upgrading my SP2007 image to WES, the size of the SLX file increased and so did the load time. How can I best avoid increases in runtime size?

        • Are the WES development tools integrated with Visual Studio?

        • What would you suggest as a resource so we can find out what components we need to include in images to get the desired functionality?

        • Does WES support Intel's Montevina platform?

        • Is the Internet Explorer component in WES more granulated?

        • Does the new version of System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) or the SCCM client have the intelligence to disable and enable the write filter on WES?
        Further Information

        To discover the answers to the above questions, read the transcript of the Jun. 17 WES chat by visiting MSDN, here.

        For more information on WES, see our earlier coverage, here. The WES CTP can be downloaded from Microsoft's website, here.


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