Apologies

For those of you regulars, you may remember once I mentioned that this is one of two blogs I maintain - the other is a personal blog on political issues. Tuesday, i oopsed and posted a politcal article to this blog. I apologize for that - this is a technical blog, not a political one, and I do my best to keep the two worlds separate. My apologies if I offended anyone with the inappropriate cross-post.

December Security Updates available

The December Security updates for Windows XP Embedded with SP1 and SP2 for use with the Desktop QFE Installer Tool are now available on https://microsoft.embeddedoem.com. Included are the following updates:

• 904706 MS05-050: Security Update for DirectX: Vulnerability in DirectShow Could Allow Remote Code Execution (re-release)
• 905915 MS05-054: Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer

Customers may download, test, deploy, and distribute these updates to devices that have the Desktop QFE Installer tool installed. For more information on the Desktop QFE Installer Tool, see https://microsoft.embeddedoem.com/content.asp?path=/downloads/winxp/qfe/installer10.

Another update will be blogged when the component versions of these updates are live on the OEM Secure Site.

McDonald's selects Windows XP Embedded for next-gen POS

Interesting story, and more reasons why XPE is such a compelling platform for business.

October Component updates - FINALLY

Finally, the October update rollup is ready to go, in the format we've all come to know and love. I'll be pushing them out on the Download Center for Eval customers tomorrow, and making sure we don't have this drama in December...

Mobile Robots running XPE

This is kinda cool - a company called CoroWare used XPE to quickly prototype a robot for a trade show. They cut development time by up to 60% - more details at the link at the bottom.

Move over Mars Rover - here comes the Interplanetary Embedded Expeditionary Force!
Evidence Details - Global Evidence Management System

Update on October Updates

I'm trying to be neither alliterative nor redundant - the title just came out that way...

Anyway, back on November 2, I noted that we were working on getting the October updates re-released as EXE and RTF files, rather than CD ISO format. Well, the web development team has the correct bits now and is working to rebuild the pages - I expect the job to be completed by early next week. Look for an update here once the job is done.

There was also a single update released earlier this week that applies to XPE - MS05-053 is a critical security update for XP Pro. We're releasing it as a desktop update and I expect it to be available early next week as well for Embedded customers. The componentized version will be in our next scheduled release in December.

That's about it for now.

Ford squeezes an office into a truck | CNET News.com

While I'm normally excited to see technology spread into new areas, this one has me shuddering. You see, I ride a motorcycle ('96 Harley Davidson Wide Glide, in case you were interested), every day to and from work, rain or shine, day or night, hot or cold. I already have a tough enough time dealing with yuppies in BMW's talking on their cell phones on the highways and byways - now I'll have to deal with bubbas in F-350 duallies trying to make stock trades in the HOV lanes.

Add to that the fact they're using XP Pro rather than XP Embedded... Come on, guys! XPE was made for this application!

Ford squeezes an office into a truck | CNET News.com

October Component updates - almost

If you've gone to the OEM Secure Site to scan for the October componentized updates, you've been both happy and confused. Happy because the releases are out there - confused because they're in a strange format.

When the bits were released, they were released on CD - this means a few things. First, you can order an October XPE Update CD (that's probably not the name, but that's the spirit of the name) from your AR (whoever you got your toolkit from). Second, we can use existing release processes and teams to do the release, rather than me doing 90% of the release work. Third, because this is a new process, there are teething pains we're working out. The IMG file is one of them.

The IMG format is just an ISO copy of the CD we released. If you have a CD burner and software that can recognize the IMG format, you can burn your own CD - pop that CD into your development machine and you can run the update packages from it, scan the documentation, and archive it for posterity. If you don't have a CD burner and software to support it...

We've recognized this as a mistake, and are working to correct it now. However, rather than pull the release down and put it back up once we get the downloads fixed, we're leaving the IMG file available for download until we get the standard EXE/RTF downloads available.

Like I said, these are teething pains - big ugly teething pains. There are changes to our entire release process, from how I hand the bits off to how the web team handles them to exactly who the people doing the work are. We are making sure this won't happen again next time, but I can empathize with those of you affected by the problems we're having this time.

Possible problem with MS05-052

PSS has found a potential problem with XPE SP1 and SP2 systems after MS05-052 has been added to them using the Desktop QFE Installer versions of the updates. The issue is that ActiveX controls may not activate properly. If you experience this problem, add the following registry keys to your runtime:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0000031A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}]
@="ClassMoniker"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0000031A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\InprocServer32]
@="ole32.dll"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0000031A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\ProgID]
@="clsid"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\CLSID]
@="{0000031A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}"

Note that you can cut and paste the above snippet into a .REG file and apply it using RegEdit, if it's on your runtime. If not, you can add the keys offline, or using a script.

Also note that you may see this problem with the componentized version - the registry keys are owned by the COM Base component, but I'll do some more investigation and see if I can't resolve this in the components for December.

Running XPE on multiple SQL Instances

There's a great post on the Embedded Team blog that stems from some work we've been doing in Windows Servicibility. My test lead, Randy, came up with this technique in a day - another day to clean it up and make it readable, and you have the post Lynda submitted. What is it?

Well, it's how you can run two XPE databases on the same server, like maybe an SP1 DB along with an SP2 DB, all on one machine. No more second servers to handle the SP2 upgrade.

Why did we come up with this? Simple - automation. I've been talking a bit in this blog, and to MVP's and other customers at events, that moving security work into WinSE meant we had to automate a lot of stuff. One of the first things we automated was the creation of update packages, and the WinSE Build lab is integrating that automation into their normal build processes.

The problem came when they realized they needed to XPE DB's to do the XPE update builds, one for SP1 and SP2. They were really agitated when I told them that, if there's an SP3, they'd need a third server for it as well. They needed a way to use only one server if possible.

SQL Server supports multiple instances - basically, other DB servers running as separate processes on the machine. But CMI was never written to handle multiple instances - it just connects to the default instance on a given machine. The server to connect to is just a single string - no extra setting for which instance to use. But SQL already provides a syntax for selecting a server and specific instance - it's /. If you set that as the DB to connect to in DB Manager, CMI happily connects to the specified instance.

A few things to note about the steps Lynda provides:

1. We developed these steps for the WinSE Build Lab, which has a SQL Server installation being used for other purposes. Therefore, we added two new instances, one for SP1 and one for SP2, so their default instance wouldn't be affected by XPE. In your setup, you may not need to be so diligent and be able to use just a single additional instance.
2. In our build environment, it's important we keep our repository files separated, so step 6 is necessary. You may not need to do this - repository separation is provided in the DB's themselves, and all the update files go into separate repositories, so this may not be necessary. It does duplicate a few Gb of data, so if you're tight on space on your server, you should be able to skip this without affecting your builds.
3. Step 5 has you copying databases from one instance to another - we did not test, and do not yet know, if you can install the DB directly to a given instance. If anyone tries this, let us know how it worked.

That's it - questions on this procedure should be sent on a comments to either this post or the original.