Windows Embedded 7

[Neccros]

Have any of you built an Arcade PC running windows embedded for MAME and other emulators as well as PC titles?

Seeing that most arcade games these days are all built around PC hardware and most run Embedded windows, I thought about trying this to make the system as light as possible (no extra drivers, fonts, bloat)

So whats your experience with it, how did you configure it, and did you do anything trick to make it better (interface wise, etc)

[IAmDotorg]

If you haven't worked with XPe or W7e, its a VERY steep learning curve. Given the costs of storage, and the speed of modern systems, there's really no good reason to use it.

Super briefly, you end up starting at zero and turning on each little fine-grained bit you need. By default you don't even get the Win32 subsystem. I've done it a few times on some commercial systems and I can tell you -- we had the support of MS service engineers who specialized in embedded Windows, and we new every last little thing our software needed and it was still a huge effort.  Even with meticulous planning, there was months of "build a new deployment image, test, find something that isn't working, diagnose what is missing, add it and start over".

IMO, you're better off just shelling a Windows system or going Linux if you're 100% MAME. (And every single program you add beyond that makes a Windows Embedded image that much more complicated because it'll have its own requirements!)

Its been a few years, but I also seem to recall you couldn't get all the tooling you needed to build Embedded-based system with a normal MSDN account, so you may have trouble even getting the docs and software you need to do it.

[nitrogen_widget]

We looked into embedded xp yrs ago and the license for the Dev kit was stupid expensive enough that we changed our minds.
Then you still had to pay a license fee per PC.

You can boot up a live Linux read only image off a thumb drive and have persistence for settings, high scores, ect.
That's close enough to embedded.

[Neccros]

You guys are missing the point of this thread... NO I wont be going Linux because of all the DOS/Windows games I want to run as well not to mention other emulators.

I have installed Win7 Embedded on my Arcade PC. I wanted to see how many others have and what experience they had with it, what performance increases they saw vs bloated off the shelf Windows. And if they did any customization of the OS and the emulators...

[brihyn]

I'm having trouble seeing how this:

I thought about trying this to make the system as light as possible (no extra drivers, fonts, bloat)

equals this:

I have installed Win7 Embedded on my Arcade PC. I wanted to see how many others have and what experience they had with it, what performance increases they saw vs bloated off the shelf Windows. And if they did any customization of the OS and the emulators...

[Neccros]

There was a time gap between "Thought about trying" and "I installed"   I wrote the first post right before installing the OS.

The reason for the question is I wanted to see how others configured their install and if they did any custom tweaks to it...

Make sense now?

[ratsflif]

Have fun, not going to get much help from people here with the attitude.