Windows XP Embedded SP2 ?

Windows XP SP2 has now been available for download for some time now, all of my office and home PC's are now updates to Windows XP SP2 - but what about Embedded devices ?

Windows XP Embedded is currently at version SP1 (meaning that it ships with the same binary features as Windows XP Professional SP1).

Windows XP Embedded SP2 is coming, so what can you expect from this update for Windows XP Embedded? - the obvious answer is of course updating Windows XP Embedded to contain the same features as Windows XP Professional SP2 - so what exactly do I get with the update ? - let's take a look at some of the major changes to the desktop version of Windows XP, these features will also be available in Windows XP Embedded SP2.

  • Windows Firewall - security features turned on by default, as an embedded developer you will need to determine which ports on the device need to be opened to run your application
  • Internet Explorer - hardened internet browser, popup blocking etc...
  • DirectX 9 - updates to the latest version of DirectX, great for multimedia devices, and video games
  • Bluetooth - Add support for bluetooth devices
  • .NET Framework 1.1 - Use Visual Studio .NET 2003 to build C# or VB .NET applications to run on your Windows XP Embedded device (you could do this before, but you also needed to create a .config file for your application so that the application ran against the .NET 1.0 framework)

There are some other additions, which I will discuss at a later date...

XPE SP2 will install on top of your existing XPE SP1 files, the update will install new SP2 versions of components into the XPE component database, but will also leave the SP1 components intact, so you can continue to build your SP1 images without any configuration changes or additional testing.

I will post some more information about XPE SP2 over the next few days, and will send out a link to the web installer when this goes live...

- Mike