Running Device Emulator in XP Mode

If the frustration of VS2008 corrupting some of the VS2005 SDKs isn't enough to burn your butt, it's just a warm-up exercise to getting the Device Emulator working in Windows 7's XP Mode.

The first month of isolating VS2008 and VS2005 by installing one of them into XP Mode Virtual PC (VPC) was certainly disappointing. VS2008 didn't want to cooperate at all. So I did the next best thing: installed VS2005 there instead. It was a long and boring process to get VS2005, its service packs and a bunch of SDKs installed, but it worked without much pain. It even compiled some code. But launching a device emulator was a different story.

On connecting to the Mobile 5 Pocket PC Emulator device, which I use regularly for testing, the computer just stared blankly at me for a few minutes before declaring:

Cannot connect to device. Error: 0x8007064a

Try a web search for that. Mwa-hah-ha!

Anyway, the short story and the two-part solution. I finally found some obscure and easily overlooked references from people who had similar experiences.


Part One. Visual Studio won't open the project.

1. Open the solution. Visual Studio complains: "The project file cannot be loaded. The application for project ... is not installed.". Shutting down VS and restarting does nothing.


2. Right-click the project (which offers no information about why it fails. Other than some stupid message about "platform not available" or something moronically insulting like that. It's all BS - the SDKs are installed.


3. Select Reload project.


4. Watch with anger and puzzlement as VS loads the project correctly this time. Shoot me.

Part Two. The device emulator fails when running in XP Mode. I followed Brian Peek's useful guide to replacing the missing Microsoft network adapter, Windows Virtual PC and the Microsoft Device Emulator, which may have helped solved other future problems. For the emulator error, the article Cannot connect to device. Error: 0x8007064a was helpful.

1. Launch the emulator by trying to connect or by executing in with or without debugging. VS complains: "Cannot connect to device. Error: 0x8007064a".


2. Terminate the Device Emulator Manager.


3. Rename the Folder "CoreCon" (in "Documents and Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\") to "xCoreCon".


4. Start the Device Emulator (list of devices is now empty).


5. Terminate the Device Emulator.


6. Rename "xCoreCon" back to "CoreCon".


7. Now the emulator works. Shoot me and the computer.

Is Microsoft running the US Congress? Maybe that's the problem. Well, at least Solitaire still works.