HoppeRx - the cure for your ailing device

Dry spell

shende — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:13:00 GMT

My apologies to the readers of this blog - the HoppeRx contributors have all be busy working on the next version of Windows Phone and posts have been few-and-far-between. Let me assure you that the next version is very cool and worth the wait. Thanks...(read more)

Camera Preview orientation problems in WM6.5+

shende — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:01:00 GMT

WM6.5 introduced some new layering/compositing technologies that have the potential to break some display driver assumptions. If your display driver is vulnerable to this problem, it will likely break in LTK test #4040 during camera preview orientation...(read more)

Hopper log runtime mismatch

shende — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:23:00 GMT

Establishing the correct value for Hopper runtimes can sometimes be challenging due to the number of places this value is stored. Some are reporting that the Hopper log runtime numbers at the top of the file don’t always match the values reported at the...(read more)

Relieving VM pressure from the GWES process slot

shende — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:05:00 GMT

Windows Mobile displays are get larger and UI assets become more robust which is putting additional VM pressure on GWES to marshal all this additional data. Depending on the situation, implementing a “shared heap” using CeHeapCreate() to store assets...(read more)

Big Iron

shende — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:01:00 GMT

The ability to try out bug fixes is a valuable part of the Hopper process and re-building images quickly is one of the easiest ways to improve your Hopper numbers. We recently went about trying to find the combination of build server parts that makes...(read more)

Troubleshooting guide - part 2

shende — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:07:00 GMT

Below is the second half of a well executed document from guestRx: Bulent Elmaci. Bulent has worked with Windows Mobile debugging for a long time and backs up his writing with a lot of experience. It is the first of a series of articles he has written...(read more)

Troubleshooting guide - part 1

shende — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:56:00 GMT

Below is a well executed document from guestRx: Bulent Elmaci. Bulent has worked with Windows Mobile debugging for a long time and backs up his writing with a lot of experience. It is the first of a series of articles he has written to help our OEM's...(read more)

A Windows CE 6.0 Book that I keep paging back to...

shende — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:24:00 GMT

I am not much of a programming book person, I am much more likely to select code and press "F1". However, I find myself reaching for a CE 6.0 book and have been finding it quite useful. "Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Fundamentals" [Pavlov, Belevsky][ISBN 0735626251...(read more)

Writeable code sections got you down? Fear no more!

shende — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:56:00 GMT

Virtual Memory changes included in Windows Mobile 6.1 can relocate read- only code sections out of Slot 0 and into a higher address range. This change was taken to relieve pressure from our coveted, read- write Slot 0. This change will be transparent...(read more)

Hopper: Start Menu Dead!

shende — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 03:01:00 GMT

Interesting post over at "Reed & Steve" regarding Hopper and full screen apps and the Start Menu Dead message. Check it out here . Kudos to them for making this available....(read more)

Use CallWindowProc when using WNDPROC pointers directly

shende — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:42:00 GMT

A recurring theme I see while debugging application compatibility issues has to do with the direct use of the window proc pointer. If the intended WNDPROC exists in a DLL that is located in Slot 0, the pointer “looks right” and is often mistakenly used...(read more)

Are you passionate about Windows Mobile Devices?

shende — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 01:45:00 GMT

Do you want to work on next generation Windows Mobile devices long before they become commercially available? Want to be the first one to work with and influence next year’s Windows Mobile devices? Then you’re in luck! The Windows Mobile team is looking...(read more)

MemoRx incorrectly displaying VM overlap in pre-release Windows Mobile versions

shende — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 03:07:00 GMT

Many OEM’s have already noticed that Memory Doctor doesn’t correctly represent VM overlap in some pre-release versions of Windows Mobile. There have been some changes in WM VM architecture that contradict an assumption made by MemoRx which results in...(read more)

Understanding Output From “meminfo kernel”

JeCahill — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 02:52:00 GMT

I was debugging a weird hang at device boot and I used the command “meminfo kernel” in CeDebugX to get more info, but I realized right away that I didn’t know what this command was showing me. So, I did a bit of investigation into what the output meant...(read more)

Passive KITL to the rescue

MSDNArchive — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 18:59:00 GMT

I'm sure many of you have been in a situation where your device hangs during field testing. Or sometimes you are trying to track down a problem which only repros at a certain location. The best thing you can have in these situations is, of course, a live...(read more)

Running Platform Builder 6 on Vista

MSDNArchive — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:39:00 GMT

There are a lot of people that afraid to switch of Vista because they are afraid that their stuff will not work. Well truth be told, I've been running Vista+VS2005_SP1+PB6 since March of this year and haven't had any major problems. The only two problems...(read more)

Improving the Cat Parade (Part 3)

JeCahill — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:44:00 GMT

I was recently running hopper on a device that supported screen rotation and I realized that my test coverage was completely missing the rotation scenario. The device would switch between portrait and landscape mode if the user took a specific action...(read more)

Where did Callstacks go from the Hopper logs?

MSDNArchive — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:03:00 GMT

If you upgraded from an older version of Hopper to a more recent one, you probably noticed that the callstacks are gone from the Hopper logs. We made them optional for two reasons: 1. Printing out callstacks slowed down the run significantly ...(read more)

Why my private binaries do not show up in the image?

MSDNArchive — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 21:34:00 GMT

Why my private binaries do not show up in the image? I've been asked this question too many times by now. Many partners when testing their private changes have to figure it out the hard way. The reason why your updated binary doesn't show up in the...(read more)

Improving the Cat Parade (Part 2)

JeCahill — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:21:00 GMT

There have been a few blogs that talk about the benefit of focusing hopper runs on individual applications to work out the stability bugs one application at a time. But, there comes a time when testing one by one may not be the best use of resources....(read more)

How to load mismatched PDBs in Platform Builder

MSDNArchive — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 03:23:00 GMT

I don't know how many times I wished Platform Builder had an option to load PDB files with timestamps that do not match my executable. This option was available for desktop users for decades. Windbg and other desktop debuggers can do it without problems...(read more)

Using The Radio Interface Layer

JeCahill — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:08:00 GMT

I was recently talking with a colleague about the RIL Proxy and it occurred to me that this component isn't well known and is pretty confusing. I've been digging into the RIL Proxy for a little while now so I've become pretty comfortable with it, so I...(read more)

Saving VM by using OEMDRIVERSHIGH package

wesbarc — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 01:42:00 GMT

The release of Windows Mobile 6 (WM6) gave us a few more tools for dealing with Virtual Memory (VM) issues. Compaction of slot 1 is new for WM6, in previous releases all slot 1 modules were aligned on 64k boundaries, causing VM address space to be wasted...(read more)

Fit N Finish for Qwerty Keyboards

MikeCal — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:57:00 GMT

This FitNFinish document describes a number of best practices for creating Windows Mobile devices with QWERTY keyboards. Although there are a lot of suggestions for placement of keys, my main purpose for writing this was to describe the best way to handle shift, shift lock, alt, and alt lock. This subject is surprisingly complex, and I’ve seen a number of QWERTY devices handle these functions incorrectly. See section 3 of the attached document for a detailed description of the correct operation of these keys.

The attachment contains the FitNFinish document, “QWERTY Suggestions” in both Word 2007 and PDF formats. The content is the same in both, so use whichever file works best for you. There is also a KeybdFnF.exe. This is a Windows Mobile application that will run on both touch screen (PocketPC) and non touch screen (Smartphone) devices. The application allows you to test that your shift and alt functionality work correctly. It asks you to type certain key combinations on your device, shows what your keyboard sent, and compares that to what it should have sent. The program will verify that your shift and alt keys match the suggestions in section 3 of the document.

The program was written with the Windows Mobile SDK. Please let me know if you have any trouble running it on your devices.

Mike Calligaro

Debugging Suspend/Resume Issues

JeCahill — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 03:04:00 GMT

The blog "Snow White's Poison Apple" describes how to test the most common suspend/resume hang. Other suspend/resume issues can be debugged over a "Passive KITL" connection. A standard KITL connection (a.k.a. "Active KITL") gets dropped when a device suspends, however, Passive KITL doesn't suffer from this problem.

To enable passive KITL on a device, build a KITL image but change OEMInit() so it calls KitlInit(FALSE). The FALSE parameter will tell the kernel to initialize the KITL structures without initializing the hardware. Since the hardware isn't initialized, KITL won't be affected when the suspend path powers off the hardware. Check out the CE6.0 documentation for more information about implementing KITL and enabling active or passive KITL.

Once passive KITL is enabled, a trigger is needed to activate KITL and break into the debugger when an issue occurs. The best way to do this is to modify the keyboard driver so that it calls DebugBreak() when a specific key is pressed. With the device configured and the trigger in place, a tester can suspend/resume the device repeatedly until the device hangs, then press the specific button and connect to the device in Platform Builder. From this point on, the hang can be debugged using Platform Builder’s debugging tool’s just like any other system hang.