Pocket PC emulator with network access without Virtual PC?

Question

In developing software for the Pocket PC platform, I have been happily using the Pocket PC emulator that Microsoft provides with Visual Studio (and as a free download). It provides for much faster develop/deploy/test cycles. (Of course, I do still final testing on real hardware). I have also found that providing the emulator to other folks in the office (e.g. the documentation team) allows them to get accurate screen shots with little effort. So, I'm convinced this is a great tool for my situation.

Here's the concern: In order to use the networking capabilities of the emulator, one must install Microsoft Virtual PC on the machine that will run the emulator. This seems like an awful heavyweight requirement for such a small tool. Has anyone found a simpler way to enable networking functionality on the Pocket PC emulator?

Answer 1

It's possible to extract the driver required for the Emulator from the Virtual PC 2007 setup file. For Windows 7 users that have Windows Virtual PC installed, this is actually the only known way to get the Emulator working in a network environment (since installing Virtual PC 2007 is not an option once Windows Virtual PC has been installed).

Here's the blog post explaining the procedure. In a nutshell, you extract the VMNetSrv driver from the Virtual PC 2007 SP1 setup file and then manually install this driver on the network adapter you use for Internet connectivity:

• BrianPeek.com: Windows Virtual PC and the Microsoft Device Emulator

Answer 2

Simple answer is no, but...

Have you considered using Microsoft's free remote display control from power toys and running your app across ActiveSync. This means that you are using the actual hardware, network comms and all, but with screen, keyboard and mouse reflected to the screen. I find it works a treat.

Answer 3

We went event a step further. We create a solution for building against compact framework and one solution for building against the win32 .net framework. As all code is just C#, there shouldn't be any problems compiling and running the application as Win32 application on the PC.

There is another great benefit - it's much faster to compile for Win32 than for WinCE.

Hope this helps...