Bill Gates to Receive Honorary UK Knighthood

Yes, we all know that, as a U.S. citizen, he can’t carry a title of nobility, but there is is anyway.  He can’t go by Sir William, but he can sign his name Bill Gates, K.B.E. (Knight of the British Empire).  And no, I don’t know if he’s taking jousting or swordsmanship training… :-)

Yahoo! News - Bill Gates to Receive Honorary UK Knighthood

OK, I mentioned Sean Liming's new book, Windows XP Embedded Supplemental Toolkit, in a previous post. I just got my copy of it today, and it looks good.

Sean's covered most of XPE SP2, and relied heavily on the Embedded community to give him pointers, tips, and info. The updated Tips and Tricks from Embedded's own Lynda Allen are worth the read in and of themselves (ignore the MS ID numbers - they're just SQL ID fields and mean absolutely nothing to anyone). And the tools are worth the price - heck, Component Tracker alone is worth the price (it gives you all sorts of cool info about a component, like a list of dependencies and what depends on the component). Highly recommended - check out Sean's website for more details.

I don't know how good a reviewer I can be, but as I read it, I'll dump my thoughts here.

Cool new web site

This will go on the left in a few minutes - Sean Liming has a cool web site with some kick-ass tools on it. I'd be giving a look if I were you. His stuff is the best docs on XPE, and his latest toolkit is awesome, well worth the price of admission.

QFE issues

We've had some recent issues with the .Net security update for XPE desktop installs (MS05-004, KB 887219, ASP.NET Path Validation Vulnerability).  The way we do .Net installs on XPE isn't the way the update package thinks it should be, so the update won't install on XPE runtimes.  We're going to pull the update from the OEM Secure Site, and are working on a way to make this work for XPE runtimes.  Sorry for the problems.

October Security Bulletins available for XPE

The October set of Windows XP Pro security bulletins is out for XPE, and has been posted to the OEM Secure Site for use by XPE customers.  What's posted are the updates to the runtime for use with the (inaccurately named) Desktop QFE Installer tool.  Look for the database updates toward the end of next week on the OEM Secure Site and the Download Center.  We do the desktop updates first for two reasons:

1. Devices deployed in the field are much more susceptable to attack than devices that have not yet been built.
2. There were six security updates this month that affect XPE.  When we componentized them, we had three database updates due to component overlap.  That means nine separate releases in two locations - quite frankly, that was too much for us to handle, so we prioritized the desktop releases per reason #1 above.

Issue

One thing to note is that we had a bit of a problem with the package installer - again.  Now, before you start hurling tomatos or other sharp pointy things at my head, this one is easy to work around, and we're working with the team that owns the installer to make sure this is the only month this happens (actually, I'd like to give them some credit - once we found the problem, they found the solution in a few hours, and we weren't delayed in releasing anything).

In short, you need to add a dummy.cat file to your runtime before you execute the update on the runtime.  Details on are the download pages for the desktop updates, and are repeated here for completeness.  Follow these steps to get any of these six updates to run on your device:

1. Create the following folder on the device:
   \Windows\system32\CatRoot\{F750E6C3-38EE-11D1-85E5-00C04FC295EE}
   
2. Create a file in this folder called dummy.cat. The contents and size of the file are not important. The following command line can be used to create this file:
   copy con dummy.cat
   CTL-Z<ret>
   
3. Execute the update package

You can create a zero-length dummy.cat and copy it over as part of a DUA script or SMS script as well - you just need to have the file in the folder specified before running the update on the runtime.  And have the DQI installed, but that's another story...

DirectX 9.0c for XPE now available

Check out the Embedded Download web page, and you'll see a new feature listed at the top - DirectX 9.0c for XPE.  This has been a long time coming, and we're happy to finally have it done (well, almost done - it's still being released to the OEM Secure Site, but that should happen Monday).

Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 2 Tech Preview

You may have already heard about this, but if you head over the the download center, you can get the Tech Preview version of XPE SP2.  This is the RC version - the final version should be available fairly soon.

You can read more about the tech preview on MSN Money as well.

Sygate providing XPE Security Solution for State of Iowa Judicial Branch

Pretty cool - the State of Iowa Court Information SYstem is using XPE thin clients and Sygate's Security Agent 4.0.

STATE OF IOWA JUDICIAL BRANCH SELECTS SYGATE'S ADVANCED ENDPOINT SECURITY FOR WINDOWS XP EMBEDDED THIN CLIENTS

Robothon - SRS Mini Challenge

Here's a cool website for Robothon - SRS Mini Challenge, a robotics challenge.  One of our internal partners has built a robot based on XPE for this - here are the details he's given me (with personally identifying info removed, of course):

It's built around a Via EPIA 5000 motherboard running XP Embedded with .NET Framework 2.0 Beta 1 off a Compact Flash card.  It can be remote controlled over 802.11b as well as running .NET applications locally.

Its I/O device is an Acroname Brainstem (5 A/D ports, 5 Digital I/O ports, 4 PWM ports, 2 I2C ports).  Its sensors include GPS with WAAS & Logitech QuickCam for image processing.  I'll be adding additional sensors such as a digital compass, MEMS accelerometer, MEMS gyroscope, temperature sensor, and Sharp IR object detectors.  Unfortunately time is short (1 week left) before the Seattle Robotics Society contest, so I'm not such how many of these other sensors I'll get integrated before the contest.

As soon as I get more info, I'll pass it along...

Sean Liming starts XP Embedded Center

Sean Liming, author of the books "Windows XP Embedded Advanced" and "Windows NT Embedded Step-By-Step" has opened the XP Embedded Center, a new web site around XPE.  If you have need of an experienced consultant with tons of embedded experience, drop by Sean's site and see what he can do for you.