RAM EWF Creation

  • Thread starter Thread starter matt
  • Start date Start date
M

matt

We recently began using the EWF feature on our products.
We have been fairly succeful in upgrading our previous
units.

My problem is that on a new product I have I installed a
disk image which had been resealed (it contained an ewf
protected volume.) This installed fine and the ewf was
set up correctly. Unfortuantly the image did not work on
the new product (not because of the EWF).

Being unaware of the etprep utility I deleted the image
before removing the ewf configuration partition. I then
used delpart.exe to remove this partion. repartioned,
reformated my disk, and re-installed a new image from
scratch. This time the fbalog read that an ewf partition
had been created, but later deleted after an "inavalid
handle was returned" on opening.

I have now tried every manner of formating and partioning
my disk (even using gdisk to perform a 7 pass DOD
diskwipe.) But I can not get a "Valid Handle to be
returned." The ewf partion has been created in primary
disk space and logical disk space but nothing seems to
work.

I'm using a 245mb IDE disk on chip. The only useable
space I need is a 120mb primary partition for the
operating system. The EWF is Ram based, not starting
enabled.

Help (thanks),

Matt
 
Matt:

I ran into this problem when trying to deploy to HD's when I was using
etprep. I would make my master disk and just before the manual reseal, I
would delete the EWF partition (I use the RAM-based) via etprep and perform
the reg hack to tell fba to re-create the EWF partition on next boot-up.

To make a very long story short, this method of deployment was not reliable
for me. I was getting errors 0x2 or 0x57 etc. in my fba log some of the
time. I think there are issues with etprep and EWF. I ended up getting a
diagnostic build of Symantec Ghost and I image the EWF partition along with
my other partitions. I have numerous posts about this. I have since
learned that you don't even need the EWF partition when deploying with
RAM-based EWF. I have not tested this though. I kinda like to see the type
0x45 EWF partition on my disk ;-)

I'm not sure what to recommend to you as I don't use Disk on chip. I have
run into cases where once I deployed to a HD with a EWF partition, I could
never re-deploy to that same disk. Once I moved to using Ghost as a way to
deploy with the EWF partition in my image, all is well with some known
caveats that are explained in previous posts.

HTH... Doug
 
Just a reminder that the Windows XP Embedded
development and test teams will be in an online chat regarding Enhanced
Write Filter (EWF) and El-Torito in Windows XP Embedded. Please bring all
your questions, since the chat will be archived and can hopefully serve as
another resource to answer some of the tough questions.

Here is the date/time of the chat.

August 7, 2003
10:00 A.M. - 11:00 A.M. Pacific time
1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Eastern time
17:00 - 18:00 GMT
18:00 - 19:00 BST

http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats/

Lynda

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