For Motorola Solutions Mobile Computers with CE6.0, WM5.0, and WM6.0 there are no Device Configuration Packages (DCP’s) that allow for custom Hex images with the TCM Tool.
You can still create a custom Application Image with the OSUpdate tool. Make sure you have the latest OSUpdate version and make sure there are two special DLL’s added to your OSUpdate installation. Without the zlib1.dll and zlibce.dll installed the CAR/GAR option will not appear in the OSUpdate menu.
I was very dependent on TCM for all of my customer images, and it took me a while to learn that CAR and GAR files can provide the same type of customization for \Application Directories on WM5/WM6.5.3 and Windows CE6. The process for creating these was included in the OSUpdate Package Builder documentation, but customers were still having trouble translating the documentation into creating a working image.
Based on what I had learned and needed to create to help customers out, I created the attached white paper on making a GAR/CAR image file. If you run across any errors or omissions, please let me know and I will correct and repost.
2 Replies
Updated version of the document and inclusion of the two special DLL files.
Chris; One very important thing that may not be obvious about this approach is that it relies on the actual OS Update NOT erasing the Application Partition. This is because the CAR/GAR file is processed and does its modifications to the Application Parition BEFORE the actual OS Update is performed. If the OS Update then clears the Application Partition, then all that content will be lost. Since there is NO LONGER any way to create an Application Partition with pre-built content, there is no way around this since the OS Update process cannot load an image of the Application Parition. There are two main implications of this. The first is, you MUST NOT include anything (such as the Clean and Blank files for WM) as part of your OS Update or you will cause this condition. The second is, if the OS Update causes the Application Partition to be cleared, then you are pretty much out of luck. In most cases, this will only happen when moving from one MAJOR OS version to another (e.g. WM5 to WM6). It generally happens when the size of the Application Partition had to change, such as when the OS itself got bigger. Only the device team that produced the OS Update can tell you for sure whether this will happen when applying a given OS Update to any specific prior OS. In some cases, such as moving from WM5.0 to WM6.1, there were special multi-step processes that were developed to circument these limitations. But such processes generally required that OS Update Packages be specially built and DID NOT allow for general pre-loading of the Application Partition. Instead, they preserved key information that could allow a management system such as MSP to deploy the OS Update, retain manageability across that update, and redeploy the Application Partition contents AFTER the OS Update. Such solutions are also generally VERY specific to particular families of devices. Allan