Connectivity issues after installing Visual Studio SP1

MobileDevGroup — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 09:18:00 GMT

Issue:
Developers who upgraded to VS 2005 SP1 from VS 2005 RTM may have noticed issues in their connectivity. When they try to connect to device they will be getting one of the following error messages depending on whether you have ActiveSync installed in your machine or not.

- ActiveSync not installed

- Device is not ready

Reason:
In VS 2005 SP1 we did some bug fixes in conman2.dll (desktop side component) and conmanclient.exe (device side component). When you install SP1 both conman2.dll and conmanclient.exe (along with other binaries) get updated. If you have RTM version of conmanclient.exe running in your device then connection from desktop will fail (as the expected version of conmanclient.exe is not present in device).

If desktop component finds that conmanclient.exe is not of the same version it tries to shut it down, bootstrap the device (copy the device side binaries to device and start them). In case of WinCE devices (e.g. CEPC), bootstrap being manual, will try to use ActiveSync and fails with an error message if the device is not connected through ActiveSync.

In case of emulator saved states this won't be any problem. Desktop will be able to re-bootstrap the emulator using DMA bootstrap. Because of the extra bootstrap, time to connect to the emulator saved state will slightly increase.

How to solve this:

If you have wince device with RTM binaries (conmanclient.exe, CMAcept.exe) then replace them with the SP1 binaries. Then run conmanclient.exe and cmaccept.exe from device. Now try the connection from desktop.

In case of emulator, connect to the emulator once using SP1. Now the newer (SP1) binaries will be present in the emulator. Create a fresh saved state out of this.

---

Anand R

VS 2005 SP1 is now available !

MobileDevGroup — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 02:14:00 GMT

Yes VS 2005 SP1 is now available for download. Here are some useful links I wanted to share.

VSTS patches download	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bb4a75ab-e2d4-4c96-b39d-37baf6b5b1dc&DisplayLang=en
Express patches download	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7b0b0339-613a-46e6-ab4d-080d4d4a8c4e&DisplayLang=en
TFS patches download	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a9ab638c-04d2-4aee-8ae8-9f00dd454ab8&DisplayLang=en
How to obtain VS 2005 SP1	http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=929697
Hotfixes in VS 2005 SP1	http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=918526
VS 2005 SP1 Release Notes	http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=928957
Heath’s blog with a ton of useful SP1 related information on install issues, install times, insights into how SP1 install works, etc	http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths/archive/tags/VS+2005+SP1/default.aspx

So as a device developer what should you expect ? Some big areas we touched upon were:

We Added Development Support for Windows Embedded 6.0 platform based devices
Ability to develop using SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition
Added 15 Device Side MFC Classes to MFC for Devices
Fixed issues with eVC to VS 2005 Migration Wizard
Updated to the latest Version of Device Side Native Compilers
Included the latest versions of the Windows CE Remote Tools

and many other bug fixes both from our team as well as other teams we work with.

Thanks

Amit

Visual Studio For Devices : SP1

Connectivity issues after installing Visual Studio SP1

VS 2005 SP1 is now available !