CF programs do not run on my Pocket PC

[I.R.F.]

I'm trying to run a very simple CF app I wrote on my Pocket PC running
WM2003SE, and although I am able to build and deploy using VS2005, when I
try to run it on the device nothing happens. If I try to debug from VS it
fails with an error "Could not load the CLR" or something like that. But it
did deploy CF 2.0, and the device thinks CF 2.0 is installed. There are no
problems running on the emulator.

I also noticed that an older app I'd built with VS2003 against CF1.0 no
longer runs on the device either. This app used to run fine, although I have
since had to replace the device (with the same model), so I'm not sure if it
ever actually ran on the new one. But the device definitely thinks it has
CF1.0 installed. I also tried building a new app in VS2005 against CF2.0,
with the same results. (VS2003 is now completely unable to communicate with
the device, but I'm assuming that's a separate problem.)

My first guess is that somehow the CLR is simply not loading, but I haven't
worked much on the PPC and I'm stuck on how to troubleshoot this. Is there
any way to see what might are occurring? As it is the failure is completely
silent. Is there a way to validate the CLR installation? I've tried removing
and reinstalling, it didn't help.

Another thing I've noticed is that every time I deploy from the desktop, VS
redeploys the CF 2.0 cab, as if it didn't recognize that it's already there.
I don't know if that might be revealing. I haven't yet tried a hard reset,
but I'll probably try that next and see what happens on a clean device.

This all used to work well, but somewhere along the line something broke,
and I don't know what. The major environment changes in that time are a) I
got the replacement device (which should be identical to the previous one),
and b) I installed VS2005 on the desktop machine.

Any suggestions are appreciated -- at this point I'm not sure where to even
start looking, and it's very frustrating!

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[I.R.F.]

Some additional info:

I found the CF 2.0 install log on the device, and it does look like the
installation is not succeeding. The specific problems appear to be
GAC-related: first there's a message "Delete GAC list file: failure",
followed by an exit code of 0x80008001 from cgacutil.exe, and the lines
"GACing failed." and "Unable to add files to GAC."

 

[Ilya Tumanov [MS]]

This failure to GAC was reported couple times on Acer n50 and iPaq h5550,
both running German OS.



http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=303978&SiteID=1



Attempt to repro that on Acer n50 with latest German OS failed (e.g.
installation worked as it should).

I suspect this might be faulty device which corrupts files in memory.


--
Best regards,

Ilya

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[I.R.F.]

Thank you for the reply. I'm on a Dell device running the English OS, but it
sounds like that might not matter.

Can you suggest any way to confirm there is file corruption, so I can
convince Dell to provide a warranty replacement?

Thanks again.

 

[Ilya Tumanov [MS]]

I would suggest copying huge binary (should take almost all memory on device
and should not be the one converted by Active Sync - ZIP would be good) file
to the device and then back to desktop and comparing copy with original
using "fc /b file1 file2".



If it shows files are not the same, you've got some hardware issue.
However, it's not that easy to detect memory issues.

NETCF calculates checksums of relatively big files so even one changed bit
would be detected.



By the way, what's the device model? We do have bunch of Dell's here and
NETCF V2 sure installs on to x50v.

--
Best regards,

Ilya

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[I. R. F.]

The problems go away after a hard reset, but they reappear if I restore the
device from a backup. So there's something in the old memory image that
messes things up. It's probably somethin gI did, maybe I restored from a
backup after a ROM upgrade or something like that, and got some bad file
versions mixed in.

Anyway, I guess I'll just endure the pain of building a new partnership and
reconfiguring everything, and hopefully things will continue working. On the
bright side, at leat there's hope that it's not a hardware problem!

Thanks again.

 

[I.R.F.]

Thank you again for the replies. As I described in a follow-up post, a hard
reset seemed to fix things, as long as I didn't restore from an old backup.
I'm not 100% convinced I'm in the clear, because the very first time I tried
deploying CF2.0 against the freshly-reset device it didn't work; but when I
reinstalled it it was fine, and after another hard reset it was fine the
first time. But if there is a real problem, maybe it's something I can live
with, luckily I'm under warranty for a few more years

BTW the device is an x50v, so it sounds like 2.0 should be fine.

Thanks again!