Connecting the Windows Mobile V5 Smartphone Emulator to Visual Studio 2005 August CTP Build

This posting relates to "SMS/Text Voting Solution available for download. Utilizes Windows Mobile V5, SQL Mobile 2005 and SMS Message Interceptor"

There is a known problem connecting the Windows Mobile V5 Emulator to the August CTP build and you'll like get one of two errors should you try.

  1. The connection failed for unknown reason - yup very helpful
  2. or "Connection Failed: The device security configuration disallowed the connection. Ensure that you have the appropriate certificates on your device for development. Review your SDK documentation for the proper security settings for connecting to this device" - slightly more helpful

So armed with the last bit of info I went digging around and found some interesting looking configuration files in the "file://C:\Program Files\Windows CE Tools\wce500\Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone SDK\Tools\Securityconfiguration" directory plus a readme.txt file... Cool a readme.txt file with some guidance on not to use the "SecurityOff" configuration, so you can guess which one I choose (yes I know, guilty, if you have ever been to one of my security talks:-)

From Visual Studio:-

  1. Select Tools, Device Emulator Manager.
  2. select the "Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone Emulator".
  3. right mouse click it and if not connected then connect it.
  4. Then cradle the Emulator. This will start up Active Sync and it will connect to the Emulator.
  5. Copy the security config, ummm in my case "SecurityOff.cpf", but I know you wont choose that will you!!
  6. Paste it in to the \Windows\Start Menu\Accessories directory on your connected Smartphone emulator.
  7. From the Emulator navigate to the Accessories menu and click on the .cpf file you copied across.
  8. You'll see you have a text message saying that the security config has changed.
  9. Now the Smartphone Emulator should connection to Visual Studio just fine.
  10. You can connect the Emulator to Visual Studio by
    1. selecting the "Windows Mobile V5.0 Smartphone Emulator" and clicking on the connect icon
    2. or the "Windows Mobile V5.0 Device" if you still have the Emulator connected to ActiveSync as Visual Studio thinks it's a real device.

I'm pretty sure this problem is is just a August CTP Build problem and in all seriousness you should probably investigate the other security config options.

Cheers, Dave