Brad,
I have made SDI Image that boots XPE from RAM.
Then I have made two bootloaders one for USB Flash disk, one for CD. (For CD
it is probably not needed.)
If you have complete build that wont be changed every few days. Then you can
add it in some selfextracting archive file than you can place inside of this
SDI file, with some wizard that you create.
SDI image can be booted from network, any medium that can run ntldr. or any
thing that can run custom bootloader.
You probably don't need to write bootloader to boot from CD.
Do following:
1. Make SDI file that you can boot from HDD. You need to add entry in
boot.ini that will start ram boot.
2. you need three files on bootable partition (boot.ini xpeinstall.sdi,
ntldr.)
3. Make bootable CD from this partition.
After your XPE starts you can present user with custom wizard that will
allow him new installation (with partitioning, etc) or just update files.
It is up to you.
Our idea is to have our program integrated with XPE that will work on as
many different hardware platform as we can support. Then we will sell our
hardware (full device or just a card) with COA, and XPE deployment CD.
So that even end users with little or no computer skill can at least update
software. Put in CD and auto update will empty C:, deploy new version of
software and XPE. I can't think easier way (for user) to do this since we
don't have access to network (in many cases). All configurations are kept on
other partitions.
Regards,
Slobodan
