POSReady 2009 updates ported to Windows XP SP3 ENU

[jaclaz]

dencorso, on 11 Jun 2014 - 1:32 PM, said:

... and that all my senseless hazarded guesses turned out to be right 

Just to clear the extent of my previous comment, the point was not about your guesses being senseless or hazarded (actually - as most of your ones - they were educated guesses ), only about of the inherent senselessness of guessing in itself (with such a short period left before having the "real thing").

There are IMHO more useful activities, like (example) :

jaclaz

[submix8c]

FYI - 2K3 listed here -

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171816-its-patch-tuesday-you-know-what-that-means/#entry1080095

 

Seems we have "somewhat replicated" topics.

 

HTH

[harkaz]

For anyone interested, I've uploaded the latest modified June 2014 sfxcab installers at RyanVM.net. The update.exe file is patched, but it will work like the original.

[the xt guy]

Harkaz, thanks for the June 2014 XP patches. I applied 2939576, 2957503 and 2957509 a few days ago to my XP SP3 system with no problems.

[dersonpg]

Harkaz, thanks for the June 2014 XP patches. I applied 2939576, 2957503 and 2957509 a few days ago to my XP SP3 system with no problems.

 

Guys,

can anyone tell if this trick works with WinFLP?

[dersonpg]

anyone?

[Guest]

I'm guessing here but I don't see why not.  XP is XP is XP. FLP probably has more in common with consumer XP than POS's XP.

[MrMaguire]

Well apparently the modification does work on Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs, somebody who I know of tried it with that result. However, I haven't been able to get it to work on my FLP test installation. It is a rather junky installation, so I dunno. I'm guessing that it should work. Actually, I have a suspicion that POS Ready 2009 is based off of FLP.

[nostaglic98]

Whilst I am no longer a Windows-XP user, I am interested in this project.

 

Does anyone know if the patches being applied are relevant to the XP Kernel, or if they are patching the "holes" they are supposed to as effectively as in their native OS's?

This question was posed by a "security-conscious" friend of mine, who wondered if this was merely appearing to work, but not actually beneath the skin of it.

[MrMaguire]

Whilst I am no longer a Windows-XP user, I am interested in this project.

 

Does anyone know if the patches being applied are relevant to the XP Kernel, or if they are patching the "holes" they are supposed to as effectively as in their native OS's?

This question was posed by a "security-conscious" friend of mine, who wondered if this was merely appearing to work, but not actually beneath the skin of it.

 

Well from what I've seen so far, the KB numbers between the updates issued for Windows Embedded POS Ready 2009 and Windows Server 2003 do match. In fact they even match with the updates issued for Windows Server 2008 and R2 and probably Windows Vista and 7. So I'm guessing that they're all just the same updates, and work just like any previous updates for Windows XP.

[nostaglic98]

 

Whilst I am no longer a Windows-XP user, I am interested in this project.

 

Does anyone know if the patches being applied are relevant to the XP Kernel, or if they are patching the "holes" they are supposed to as effectively as in their native OS's?

This question was posed by a "security-conscious" friend of mine, who wondered if this was merely appearing to work, but not actually beneath the skin of it.

 

Well from what I've seen so far, the KB numbers between the updates issued for Windows Embedded POS Ready 2009 and Windows Server 2003 do match. In fact they even match with the updates issued for Windows Server 2008 and R2 and probably Windows Vista and 7. So I'm guessing that they're all just the same updates, and work just like any previous updates for Windows XP.

 

 

This seems like a reasonable explanation. If POS-Ready is based on XP, then it would be okay.

But Server 2003, whilst based in that code, is an x64 OS, no? So it would be featured up differently.

 

Just checked the Wiki on POS-Ready, and I cannot believe the HUGE jump in installation size from 2009 - 7/8 variants. Thats just an incredible amount of bloat. They're CHECKOUT computers, for goodness sake!

[MrMaguire]

Windows Server 2003 and XP come in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavours, there is very little difference feature wise between the two variations. So I imagine that the updates are nearly identical.

 

You may be confusing Windows Embedded POS Ready 2009 with Windows Embedded Standard 2009. POS Ready 2009 has roughly the same footprint as XP, Standard 2009 however is quite a bit larger. Or at least the installation media is.

[jaclaz]

You may be confusing Windows Embedded POS Ready 2009 with Windows Embedded Standard 2009. POS Ready 2009 has roughly the same footprint as XP, Standard 2009 however is quite a bit larger. Or at least the installation media is.

They are completely different beasts.

The Windows Embedded Standard is a set of "components" which you can assemble in different ways, so the size of the build may vary from as little as a few Mbytes (a very basic build with Minlogon and CMD.EXE as shell) up to the "full" XP size.

The POSReady2009 can be considered as a particular "build" made out of Windows Embedded that contains ALL the same components as "normal" XP.

 

Just for the record (and not that it makes a lot of sense, mind you) the *theory* was (and is) the following:

"One single OS should Rule 'em all"

 

The "normal XP" and it's incredible amount of bloat (when compared to other slimmer previous OS's) should have been "good for anything".

 

This plan did not work, and Windows XP Embedded was born.

XP Embedded is the "right" thing, it is (again in theory) a "componentized" model that allows to build all kinds of very customized environment.

Unfortunately making a build (a working one) is something that populates for weeks the nightmares of those attempting to build one, as the complication and the "interconnectedness of all things" makes creating a working build near to impossible, and as soon as you get one, once you test it you find that something is missing, and you need to start rebuilding it, adding more components, until, little by little you have once again a "full" XP.

 

WinFLP had a different approach, it is pre-stripped of a number of components (besides having the at the time experimental "new" deploying approach), within it's limits, it does work, and the removal of components is aimed specifically to running XP on a low powered machine, but, still, it may have issues with third party components and what not. (we are talking 2005 here)

 

This approach (.wim deploying, etc.) made it's way to WePOS, that AFAIK has never had that much success.

 

In the meantime even the stupidest of PoS have become an extremely powerful hardware platform and this prompted for the making of POSReady 2009, the key here is the "Ready" in the name, there is no need to spend weeks or months to make an Embedded build, it is a "plain" XP with "standard" features and capabilities, with a rather restricted licence bolted on and an aggressive licence cost.  

 

To recap (IMHO):

• Windows XP Embedded (depending on the specific build) can be from (say) 22% to 98% similar to "full" XP
• WinFLP is (still say) 63% similar to "full" XP
• WePOS is (still say) 75% similar to "full" XP
• POSReady2009 is 99.99%  similar to "full" XP <- please read as EXACTLY "full" XP with some very minor changes

jaclaz

[MrMaguire]

Okay, I've just tested the modification to the registry with Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs. It does work. But what's interesting about FLP is that it has its own registry flag for Windows Update. And I suspect that it was the first XP based OS that isn't specifically Windows XP to have it.

 

 

Notice that I have the POS Ready 2009 flag too. I'm not sure if the two conflict with each other. I have tried to change and remove the Fundamentals key and DWORD value, with no success. I checked the permissions and it looks like Administrators for the local machine do have full control. So, I dunno.

 

____________

 

Also, I had no idea that FLP used a .WIM image for its installer. I wonder if the image can be extracted and added to a Windows Deployment Services server for fresh network installations?

 

POS Ready seems to have a different setup. I did check the installation media and I found a .WIM image called "Setup" being 151MB or so in size. I don't believe that is big enough to contain the whole OS, probably just the actual setup portion. The FLP .WIM image is around 350MB for comparison.

[jaclaz]

Yep, but more than that it is (the WinFlp) AND IF I recall correctly an "early" version of the .wim format not really compatible with anything else if not (maybe) with some Longhorn releases, JFYI:

http://reboot.pro/topic/3630-windows-flp/

 

You can always access the Registry Offline (booting from another instance of a NT OS or booting to a PE) to experiment with that key, you can either "import" the hive or use the Offline Registry tool to that effect:

http://reboot.pro/topic/11312-offline-registry/

 

jaclaz