The proliferation of low cost products from Asia is leading many European companies to turn to pre-integrated system components in order to be economically competitive and reduce time-to-market. To provide the best possible support for this rapidly and continuously developing trend in the local market, Arrow Electronics has created Arrow Embedded Solutions (AES). This team focuses on integrated solutions such as LCDs, industrial PC boards, Machine-to-Machine (M2M) wireless modules, power packs and embedded operating systems (OSs).

Microsoft is the undisputed market leader for OSs in the desktop environment and has successfully migrated many characteristics of its commercial IT software to the embedded world. Embedded Windows CE, Windows XP Embedded and Windows Embedded for Point of Sales are familiar names to those who operate in the embedded segment. These OSs add the opportunity for personalisation to the advantages offered in the consumer world. Despite this, many of the associated embedded tools are not yet very well known. Among these, the Windows Pre-Installation Environment (WinPE) is a tool which deserves more attention and closer study.

The purpose of this article is therefore to inform the users of Microsoft Embedded systems, and in particular Windows XP Embedded, Windows Embedded Standard, Windows XP Professional and Vista, of the potential of WinPE for the deployment of images generated by the above-mentioned operating systems and for the generation of emergency recovery disks (ERDs).

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