Windows Mobile Device Emulator - how to save config permanently?

Question

I am working at a client site where there is a proxy server (HTTP) in place. If I do a hard reset of the emulator it forgets network connection settings for the emulator and settings in the hosted Windows Mobile OS. If I 'save state and exit' it will lose all of these settings. I need to do hard resets regularly which means that I lose this information and spend a lot of time setting:

• The emulators associated network card
• DNS servers for network card in the WM OS.
• Proxy servers in connection settings of WM OS.

How can I make my life easier? Can I save this as defaults in the emulator, or create an installer easily?

Answer 1

The problem with these devices is everything is stored in the RAM and ROM. So you need a second alternate device storage for these settings, just like a real device. So that when a real device, or your device is reset, it has a statically stored configuration file outside of the RAM that can be loaded on start up. The alternative is to do soft-resets if possible.

Answer 2

There is a way you can programmatically provision your devices. If you're using managed code, you can use Microsoft.WindowsMobile.Configuration.dll to do most of the work for you. If you're using unmanaged code, you have to use DMProcessConfigXML native function.

There's more details in this blog post by Andrew Arnott.