Visual Studio + PocketPC Emulator

Hi everyone,


first of all - I really like Parallels (I am using Parallels 3186) and for most of the windows applications it is a great solution on my MacBook, but:

I have to use Visual Studio 2005 + Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Emulator + ActiveSync to program a PDA application. Everything works fine until the Pocket PC emulator is started and I try to deploy the program on the PDA. During this process Parallels consumes about 100% of the cpu usage, the temperature rises up to 71°C and everything freezes. Sometimes the whole MacBook crashes and I have to do a complete reset.
My strategy now is to wait until the MacBook reaches 70°C and press then the pause button - then I wait until I have about 60°C and restart the VM again - and everything works fine. But honestly it is a real pain to program like that

Does someone has the same problem like me - or even better a solution?

simmayor

 

Don't use the pocket PC emulator, use the real thing. I have found while developping with the pocket pc emulator that sometimes, even though the program runs in the emulator, it has weird bug with the actual device.

What I used to do was develop and debug off an actual device. But this was 2 years ago. I have not tried developing under Parallel for PocketPC, this particular contract is finished.

 

thanks for your reply

The problem is, that I have no real pocket pc and therefore I have to use the emulator. When I have finished this project - I will (hopefully) not forced to use this stupid emulator again, so it seems I have no other choice than continuing like I did before...

 

I am using the new Microsoft Device Emulator 1.0 and 2.0 with device emulator images for Windows Mobile 2003, 5 and 6 successfully in Parallels (currently 3186, but it worked with 1970 and numerous betas before that). But I use it as a standalone, not with VS2005.

What definitely does not work (and leads to the hot freeze of the entire machine you are describing) is the old Pocket PC emulator that was part of EVC3 and EVC4. This emulator also required special builds, as it did not emulate a ARM processor but used x86. The reason why it freezes is because it is based on ugliest low level hacks borrowed from Virtual PC (for the techies: they reprogram a interrupt generator to issue interrupts at a rate so high that the Parallels emulation simply stalls while trying to serve these interrupts).

However, IMHO this old emulator cannot be used any more with VS2005 or WM5, so I'm not sure if this is really your problem. For sure, Device Emulator 2.0 itself runs great in Parallels on by MBP 17, without any pause/continue tricks needed

 

Don't use Device Emulator 1.0 - even on a real Windows machine it takes 100% of the CPU a lot of time.

I am a professional Windows Mobile developer (top 5 in sales) and I use Parallels exclusively. In fact while we test on real devices, I develop on the emulator simply because I can create multiple data set profiles and switch between them - something I can't do on a real device without having 50 devices.

I can run 3-4 emulators at the same time from Wm2003 to WM5 to WM6 Smartphone/Pocket PC (Standard/Professional) with multiple instances of VS 2005. No problems.

But definitely upgrade to DE 2.0.

 

hm, thats really strange - I thought I would already have the Device Emulator V2 if I installed VS2005 + WM 5.0 SDK?! - anyway, I downloaded the Emulator V2 again separately and installed it again, but I have to say: no improvement!

Even when the Device Emulator V2 is IDLE, it consumes between 30% and 56% of CPU usage in Windows - I have no idea why?! Particularly, if I connect with the Emulator to the webservice (running in the same VM) the CPU usage increases dramatically - the same thing occurs if VS deploys the application to the Emulator...

 

No, DE2.0 just came out from beta a week ago and before that it was in beta. So no way would it come with the SDK. Now it may come with the WM6 SDK since its required for that.

Now yes, once you have an emulator running its going to take about about 30-50% CPU and that's normal. Its emulating a whole other processor: ARM. Even running on Bootcamp they take up 30-50% of a single CPU.

But it still usable and does not run up the CPU like you said in the first post. Your first post said 100% CPU and locked the machine. Now DE 2.0 runs 30-50% CPU - how is that "no improvement"? Seems like a huge improvement - 2x-3x improvement!

But I use this daily and I simply don't see any issues. I have 2GB RAM and a 2.13Ghz Core Due MacBook Pro.

 

Hi akac, can you give me some help? I'm running the standalone v1 emulator and trying to get a network connection through Parallels and the Mac so I can test some Internet web sites. How should I configure the Connections/Network Cards? Should I be using the NE2000 Compatible Ethernet Driver?

I've installed the Virtual Machine Network Services Driver inside Parallels as well, but I can't get a network connection working for the Emulated device.