Re: Multi-user access of an Embedded Windows System ?

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Hi again jrb. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on the reply.

Your setup sounds intriguing, but you're going to run into a few problems
with it if I'm reading your scenario correctly. First off, EWF is available
only for Windows XP Embedded, and is not intended to be used with XP Pro or
any other "full" OS.

Second, due to licensing restrictions, you cannot install MS Office on a
system running XP Embedded. If your "server" in this system needs to be
able to run Outlook, Word, etc., you will need to use a full Windows
install, and in this case it sounds like the system would be best suited
running a version of Windows Server 2003 in order to provide support for
multiple users via Terminal Services.

Third, it just occurred to me that there may be a terminology issue in our
communication here, and I apologize if this has caused some confusion. In
my original reply, I was referring to "Terminal Services", which is the
system component that allows you to login and control a Windows system (NT4,
2000, XP, WS03, etc) via Remote Desktop Connection from another system. XP
Embedded supports Terminal Services, and you can take advantage of it and
Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to perform various tasks within an Embedded
system. (Often, the term "Terminal Server" and "Terminal Services" are
interchangeable.)

However, it looks to me like what you're referring to is the Terminal Server
License for Windows Server 2003, which gives you the ability to host
applications on a server machine and access them from various clients. That
sounds very much like the setup you're trying to achieve here.
Unfortunately, this means a couple of things:

(1) You can't get EWF to work with WS03 - this is simply not possible or
supported.
(2) You cannot install WS03 on a CompactFlash card, partially because of the
lack of EWF. WS03 really requires a fixed hard drive in order to function
properly.

I hope this answers your questions. Please let us know if you have more!

PS: One more note about EWF:

EWF does not provide support for network overlays (which would be the proper
term for the system you described). An EWF Disk Overlay uses a special
partition set up on the boot hard drive to store the write operations that
would otherwise be sent to the protected partition. EWF is an extremely
low-level driver (it is loaded as part of NTLDR), and thus it has no network
awareness.

If your system does not need to persist data between boots, you might want
to look into using an EWF RAM or RAM REG overlay instead, which stores
writes to system memory. This would prevent your boot device from receiving
any writes at all, but the tradeoff is that as more writes are directed to
the RAM overlay, this causes less RAM to be available to the OS and your
applications.

--
Matt Kellner (mattkell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
STE, Windows Embedded Group

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
===============================

"jrb1400" <jrb1400@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:7BF09348-B35E-496B-970D-7EDFBC7A1E85@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Hi Matt,
>
> Thanks so much for answering my post in the WinXP Embedded Newsgroup.
>
> Your comment that EWF can be used with Windows Terminal Server 2003 has
> given me some hope that we can put together a system that meets our needs.
> I have looked through the MSDN newsgroup "tree" for another group that may
> be
> more appropriate for this, but I'm not sure if any address the Terminal
> Server products. Any advice on where to turn next to get confirmation for
> our plans ?
>
> What we need to do is..
> (1) Add a computer board to our system that runs a Microsoft Windows
> operating system. This must run Outlook, Word, (the usual stuff), and
> also
> run some additional 3rd party software that we can install. After
> installation, this new computer board will not have a screen and keyboard
> connected.
> (2) Provide access to this computer from up to 5 other computers via
> Remote
> Desktop Protocol.
> (3) This new computer should be "read-only" and not write on it's local
> disk
> drive (which will probably be a flash disk). We will have writeable disk
> storage available elsewhere on the network.
>
> We will have many of these "systems" and need to maintain a common
> configuration.
>
> While I have been using Windows systems for years, I'm a newbie at doing
> any
> installations. How can I verify that we should be able to do this?
> (A) Install Windows Terminal Server to boot initially from an on-board
> flash
> disk, and connect to the network drive.
> (B) Get the Enhanced Write Filter (EWF) and install it to work with the
> Terminal Server to protect the flash disk. The EWF could use a disk
> overlay
> on the network drive.
>
>
> I understand that we need the proper licenses for this. I think in
> addition to the Windows 2003 Terminal Server License we might need the 5
> seat
> licenses per system as well. I'll look into this separately.
>
>
> I would appreciate any advice that you might have on this (especially the
> procurement of and installation of EWF), or if you can refer me to someone
> who knows about the Terminal Server products that would be a great help
> also.
>
> Thanks very much for your help.
>
>
>
> "Matt Kellner (MS)" wrote:
>
>> Hi jrb. There are a couple of facets to this question that I'll try to
>> address here.
>>
>> Terminal Services on WinXP Pro and Embedded will not allow more than one
>> user to be logged in to the computer at the same time, to the best of my
>> knowledge. I believe Fast User Switching (which is supported at the main
>> desktop only) is the only way to allow more than one person to be logged
>> in
>> at the same time, but even then, only one person can be actively using
>> the
>> computer at a time.
>>
>> The ability to have multiple users logged in via TS is something that's
>> available in the Windows Server 2003 product line.
>>
>> (Again, I'm not an expert on this - there is a chance I'm wrong on this
>> topic. Could someone with more experience with TS confirm this?)
>>
>> As for TS and EWF interacting with one another: Sure, there's no reason
>> you
>> couldn't install TS and EWF together on the same runtime. EWF will
>> prevent
>> ALL write operations from going to the protected partition - it's up to
>> you
>> to decide whether you want them to be directed to RAM (RAM/RAM Reg
>> Overlay)
>> or to a separate partition (Disk Overlay). But TS should work fine in
>> that
>> scenario so long as you don't exceed your system's RAM or disk space.
>> (In a
>> RAM Overlay, the more writes are performed to the overlay, the less RAM
>> is
>> available to the operating system. In a TS scenario, I would recommend a
>> Disk Overlay - you can always discard the overlay on shutdown if you
>> don't
>> need to persist the written data between boots.)
>>
>> --
>> Matt Kellner (mattkell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
>> STE, Windows Embedded Group
>>
>> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
>> rights.
>> ===============================
>>
>> "jrb1400" <jrb1400@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:C173DA99-089A-4A81-9B31-31ED747F9F41@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> >I understand that I can install Win XPE and use the RDP protocol to
>> >control
>> > the computer from a remote location, but that allows only one user at a
>> > time.
>> > Is there some other product that behaves more like Windows Terminal
>> > Server
>> > where multiple users can log in simultaneously?
>> > Or - is there some way to install Windows Terminal Server in such a way
>> > so
>> > the disk is not written? For example, if we could install Windows
>> > Terminal
>> > Server on a flash disk, and use something like XPE's EWF capability to
>> > prevent writes to the flash disk, that would be ideal.
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>


.

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