Boot to another system

FinalBuilder Discussion
1

Hey guys.

Before I'll ask my questions, I just want to say that FinalBuilder is one of the best softwares I've ever seen! Great forum as well !

Now, during our build process, we are doing some tests. This include running an EXE on a specific folder and it need to be done on XP (on which the FinalBuilder in installed) and on Vista - another system that is installed on the same machine.

Is it possible to do a reboot during the process, or even at the end of it? If not, it could be a great idea - to add a reboot action that on restart, will continue for the point it left.

What I had in mind is to add a scheduler action 5 minutes after the process has finished. This scheduler will run a batch file that will boot to another system (that's not hard to do). The new system will run a FinalBuilder project on startup. This project will do what I need and also will add a scheduler 5 minutes later that will run another batch file for reverting to the original system. That's it.

Now, although possible to do it like this, it seems a bit patchy.

What is the best plan to do something like this?

2

Hi guy,

Thanks for the kind words about FinalBuilder!

Your problem is a pretty complex one - working with two different Windows installs on the same machine is definitely a tricky proposition. I'm not sure if we can suggest a better approach than the one you outlined yourself.

My recommendation, if it's at all possible in your situation, would be to use virtual machines. Both VMWare Server and Virtual Server are free products and either one can be remote-controlled by FinalBuilder to do most of the things you need - that way your project (running on the host machine) could start the target machine, run the tests using the PsExec action (with Microsoft/SysInternals PsTools suite installed on the host), and then shut down the target VM.

This has the extra advantage that you can use snapshots to create a perfectly clean preinstalled scenario, so you know that you don't have any follow-on effects from running multiple tests over a long timespan.

Just a thought.

Regards,

Angus