Search

Windows XP Embedded USB boot

Saturday, 28 October 2006 by Michel Roth

Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 2 Feature Pack 2007 introduces a new Embedded Enabling Feature called USB Boot. The user can now build a Windows XPe image that boots from a USB flash drive (UFD), a.k.a., USB thumb drive, USB key, etc. The build process is straightforward using Target Designer, and preparing the UFD for boot is just as easy using ufdprep.exe (a utility included in FP 2007).

USB Boot offers many benefits. A UFD is typically removable; swapping a UFD is much easier than swapping an internal hard disk drive (HDD). An external USB HDD is somewhere between a UFD and an HDD, and FP 2007�s USB Boot supports booting from a USB HDD as well. A UFD generally has no moving parts, which allows a UFD to be much less susceptible to mechanical failures. Recordable/rewritable CDs/DVDs have no moving parts either. However, the drives that can fully support recordable/rewritable CDs/DVDs are not widely available; the media are somewhat limited in capacity; and the whole solution is expensive. In contrast, USB ports are readily available on almost all systems; UFDs keep on increasing in capacity, as flash technologies mature; and the whole solution becomes cheaper and cheaper, positively contributing to reducing the BOM cost. Furthermore, most BIOSes on the market today support booting from a USB 2.0 device, making USB Boot a practical alternative to CompactFlash Boot.

To recap, Windows XPe now includes support for very exciting USB Boot scenarios. USB Boot enables deployment and servicing scenarios for which our customers have been asking and provides them with additional options for boot media on embedded devices. USB Boot considerably extends Windows XPe Embedded Enabling Feature set, offering many extra benefits and enabling more flexible and versatile usage scenarios.

Read it all on WindowsForDevices.com.