Cannot establish a connection. Be sure the device is physically connected to the development compute

[Bogdan Sima]

Ok, the classic error when trying to deploy on an Intrinsyc CerfPod 255SE
board (PXA255, WinCE 4.2)

"Cannot establish a connection. Be sure the device is physically connected
to the development computer"

I have done everything by the book. I have an ActiveSync connection with the
desktop. I have WCELOAD on the device, and I have correctly installed the
..Net Compact Framework. I have Toolhelp.dll on the device. I have a LAN
connection and I can ping the device. I have installed the Windows CE
Utilities and configured the correct CPU type in Visual Studio.

Sometimes is working, for a few hours or a few days, until I start getting
that error. After I receive the error for the first time, no matter what I
do I cannot make it work again unless I reset the device and erase the
registry (and then of course I have to configure the device again ...).

Now it completely stopped working. Even if I reboot the device and erase the
registry, I still cannot get VS to connect to the device. Everything else
works fine, ActiveSync, the Embedded Tools, the Platform Builder, Remote
Registry Viewer, Remote .... only VS seems to have trouble with connecting
to that device.

Any idea what's happening?

Thanks!

 

[Cristian Matesan [MS]]

The problem is that you are trying to use an WinCE4 device through
ActiveSync. ActiveSync doesn't provide support to get the instruction set
and because of this VS fails to connect. The solution is to download and
install the "Windows CE Utilities for Visual Studio .NET 2003 Add-on Pack
1.1" from www.microsoft.com/downloads. After you install go in Tools\Select
Windows CE Device CPU and select the CPU. You should be able to deploy &
debug on your WinCE4.2 device.

Hope this will help you.
Cristian Matesan


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