Tuesday, March 8, 2011

resolve windows ce remote tool connection issue

remote tools for windows ce is a set of powerful tools for debugging. I have Visual Studio 2005, Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 installed, but the remote tools don't work. They fail to connect to device with following error message:
The Microsoft ActiveSync reported the following error: Unable to load device side components. Please check server configuration settings.

There are two ways to resolve the connection issue.

1. Run remote tools from windows start menu (e.g., Microsoft Visual Studio 2005\Visual Studio Remote Tools\Remote Process Viewer, which is a shortcut to C:\Program Files\CE Remote Tools\5.01\bin\ccpview.exe), instead of starting from visual studio menu (e.g., Target/Remote Tools/Process Viewer, which is a shortcut to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows CE Tools\Platman\bin\wce600\cepview.exe). remote tools version 5.01 work fine.

2. Copy
c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows CE Tools\Platman\target\wce600\armV4i\
to
c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows CE Tools\Platman\target\wce600\armV4\
. The lack of the second directory is a bug in remote tools version 6 that causes the connection issue.