How to get Windows Mobile Device Center To Connect to the Emulator

Question

I have recently installed Windows 7 and I have come to a conclusion. While Active Sync was old and did not work great, it did work. I could connect to my devices and emulators after the proper rituals and incantations.

The other conclusion I have come to is that Windows Mobile Device Center is worse that Active Sync was. I cannot get it to reliably connect to my emulator (yes, I have set the connection type to DMA) despite how many times I cradle and uncradle. (The emulator connects to the Visual Studio Debugger just fine though.)

With active sync I had to manually press the connect button in the connection settings after cradling the emulator. The biggest change I can see with Windows Mobile Device Center is that they removed that button.

Is there any way to get Active Sync to work on Windows 7 so I don't have to deal with this? Or is there some way to get it to connect to Windows Mobile Device more reliably?

Answer 1

OK, I have not found anyway to get Active Sync on Windows 7, but I have figured out the incantations to get around the missing connect button. (I say incantations, because getting this to work seems very obscure and arcane to me.)

So here is what you do:

1. Fire up the emulator and cradle it
2. Fire up Windows Mobile Device Center.
3. Next go to the Connection Settings and change it off of DMA. Hit OK.
4. Open up the Connection Settings again and change it to DMA. Hit OK.

It should now connect.

Answer 2

This didn't quite work for me.. with a little more googling I discovered it was because I'm using win7 x64, and on this WMDC is 64 bit... and can't talk to the emulator, which is 32 bit.

Found the solution here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/microsoftdeviceemu/thread/9bd4af60-3ddc-41b0-a502-8514217d2148

Download an updated (x64) emulator from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=A6F6ADAF-12E3-4B2F-A394-356E2C2FB114&displaylang=en

After installing this I still had to change the connection settings off DMA then back to DMA to connect WMDC, but now its working fine...

Answer 3

I had this issue when connecting the emulator to Windows Mobile Device Center while in a Windows Virtual PC. This also occurs over RDP sessions.

The resolution was to disable integration components, login, connect, re-enable integration components. I believe this is due to the integration components utilising RDP to bring the virtual pc guest to the host desktop.