Booting up XPE in cold temperature

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Guest

Hello,

This is not totally XPE related, just that the machine is using XPE, and I
need some help on this.

We have this system and we use those hardy solid state drives so that we can
boot up from freezing temperatures. However, it seems that the unit couldn't
start up. The unit did manage to get into BIOS, but a bluescreen appears
after Windows tries to load. The error was a Fatal System Error, and it
seemed that Windows couldn't start up and reach winlogon. In room
temperature, the bootup is fine.

I am wondering if there are any operating temperature limits to the OS. I
mean, I thought that the hardware (and maybe solders or connections) would
probably be the limiting factors, but I need to confirm this. If the OS can
boot up in normal temperature, does it mean that there is nothing wrong with
the OS image?

Any advice or does anyone have any experience on this?

Thanks in advance!
 
Hi Rei

Software is never temperature dependant.
It's always the Hardware.

In your case, it's probably the chipset.
(MMU or Bus arbiter)
When Windows try to initialize the chipset
to run with full speed, the cold HW can not
fulfill this.
Please note, that ALL common chipsets and prozessors
are out of Specs, when you run them during
low temperature.

--

Martin Grossen, eMVP

AVNET EMG Silica
Franchise Manager Microsoft Embedded Europe

Your competent partner for Microsoft Embedded licencing

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Hi Martin,

Thanks for the prompt response! Does Win CE run the same way as XPE? We did
another experiment and booted up using Win CE successfully somehow at the
same low temperature... :(
 
Hi Rei,
Thanks for the prompt response! Does Win CE run the same way as XPE? We did
another experiment and booted up using Win CE successfully somehow at the
same low temperature... :(
Click to expand...

one more possible reason - BIOS (and OS later with ACPI/etc) can read
temperature sensors. A Siberia non-aware BIOS writer may assume that the
temperature is always positive (and never reaches 0°C for instance) and
then BIOS / OS may have problems with low T.

To be honest I still think that it's hardware problem. Actually if you
give machine some time to warm up (hanging in BIOS is quite good as it
generates a lot of heat :-) and then continue boot - all should work
much better.
A quick idea - write you own boot sector that checks T, and blocks boot
until it reaches predefined value.
 
Hi Nikolai,

BIOS works fine, as in we are able to boot and get into the BIOS settings
and toggle around. Once Windows XPE starts to load, the blue screen appears.

I don't know if it's the software, seriously, it's odd if it is really the
software. But Win CE boots ups. The device is supposed to work in pretty low
temperature, and it's a solid state drive, so it is supposed to work too.

What about ACPI? Will this have any effect?
 
Hi rei

Yes, it's possible that CE works "better" with low
temperature.
But the performance of Win CE regarding the memory
is very low. So no ACPI, no Burst RAM access....


--

Martin Grossen, eMVP

AVNET EMG Silica
Franchise Manager Microsoft Embedded Europe

Your competent partner for Microsoft Embedded licencing

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Rei,

It is too generic to say "CE boots up", "XPe doesn't". Both are component based OSes and the images you are playing with may or may
not include some driver/application software that is getting access to particular hardware or heavily using it.
ACPI would be a good example of such.

In fact you can try really simple test. Create kernel only or, easier, Minlogon based small XPe image and try to run it on the
hardware at low temperature condition.

When you say the system cannot reach Winlogon, keep in mind that there is lots of other components that are loaded up before or
during logon - drivers, services, system services.


Another test you can try is to place really loooong timeout in boot.ini for ntldr. Then the ntldr will keep the processor in real
mode for a while and that may warm it up enough to get rid of possible hardware problems.
 
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