VS2005 - XP SP2 - CE 5.0 device - ActiveSync 4.1 = No go

[josh miller]

VS2005 - XP SP2 - CE 5.0 device - ActiveSync 4.1 =
cannot deploy/debug

I've done this install on three comptuers. and i've seen several forums
where people are having problems debug and deploying on AS4.1 with XPSP2 and
VS2005 and VS2003 also.

I have got VS2003 to work so i can program my device, but my money spent on
VS2005 is currently sitting dead.

the difficulties people are having can be fixed in VS2003 as exampled in
these links. a rather big pain but hey, at least you CAN get it working...

http://weblogs.asp.net/dneimke/archive/2005/02/11/370722.aspx

http://www.opennetcf.org/Forums/post.asp?
method=ReplyQuote&REPLY_ID=1231&TOPIC_ID=305&FORUM_ID=16

HOWEVER i have yet to see any information about VS2005 where all i ever get
is
"An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket"
or
"The connection was gracefully closed"

in my multitude of tweaks and isntalls and reinstalls i have seen lots of
differnet results on VS2003 but never anything different than the above in
2005, ive have read somewhere that the WiFi sync is the way to go because
2005 doesnt like that the cradle and the wireless on the device are
resulting in 2 IP's for the device, but AS4.1 doesnt have WiFi sync does it?


I'm slightly surprised that i don't see more complaints about this, but, eh
thats just my luck for buying new technology i guess.

Anyone have any ideas?

Josh

 

[Sriram Krishnan [MSFT]]

VS2005 - XP SP2 - CE 5.0 device - ActiveSync 4.1 =
cannot deploy/debug

Sorry to hear about your issues with connectivity - I've sent your post
to the CoreCon folks to see whether they can help out.

Can you tell me what kind of device you are trying to connect to?

Also, try and see whether you can connect without ActiveSync.
Instructions at
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms228708(en-US,VS.80).aspx

 

[Lars Black]

but AS4.1 doesnt have WiFi sync does it?

I'm slightly surprised that i don't see more complaints about this, but,
eh
thats just my luck for buying new technology i guess.

Well, we had to skip VS2005 because AS4 doesn't do WiFi sync. Our programs
are running on Symbol devices with embedded barcode reader and cradle-only
sync gives us (at least) two problems:
Symbol only provides serial cradles to our devices (=slow) and it is pretty
hard to do a lot of barcode reading if the device has to remain in the dock.

So until we find a usable soultion to that, we have to stay on VS2003.

Cheers,
Lars

 

[David Owen]

Lars,

can you explain more about the statement "pretty hard to do a lot of barcode
reading if the device has to remain in the dock" ?

We have a number of Symbol devices (PPT8800); the application only
synchronizes the data when in the cradle, but it's not uncommon to have
100 - 200 scans stored for a few days before the data goes back to the
server.

David

 

[Lars Black]

David,

can you explain more about the statement "pretty hard to do a lot of
barcode reading if the device has to remain in the dock" ?

We have a number of Symbol devices (PPT8800); the application only
synchronizes the data when in the cradle, but it's not uncommon to have
100 - 200 scans stored for a few days before the data goes back to the
server.

We're not using it as a batch terminal (using PPT8846). We have made a
Warehouse Management application for Navision that are working online via
WiFi or GPRS. Each scan is validated in Navision to, among other reasons,
prevent the user from shipping wrong products to the customer. The
communication goes from the PDA to an application server that is responsible
for communication with Navision. This means that we have to scan a number of
barcodes while we're debugging the application and that is quite hard when
the device has to remain in the cradle.
Today we're using ActiveSync via Wifi and it works very well.

Hope that makes my problem more clear

Cheers,
Lars

 

[David Owen]

How are you finding that it works feasibilty-wise?
We have a second application that is used only in a situation where a
network connection is available, but even then we found it worked better to
treat the actual scans as a batch - asking a guy on a dock to scan, check
the data validation results, then scan the next one, then check the
validation resutls again, etc., when there are several hundred items to scan
was asking too much. The end-user now scans everything, then submits the
scans through a webservice in a large batch.

Just wondering.

 

[Lars Black]

How are you finding that it works feasibilty-wise?

Our users are very happy about it!

We have a second application that is used only in a situation where a
network connection is available, but even then we found it worked better
to treat the actual scans as a batch - asking a guy on a dock to scan,
check the data validation results, then scan the next one, then check the
validation resutls again, etc., when there are several hundred items to
scan was asking too much. The end-user now scans everything, then submits
the scans through a webservice in a large batch.

We do it a little different. When the user want to pick some items for a
sales order, he choose the order from a list and just start scanning the
items. On each scan, the data is sent to Navision (via a
webservice-kind-of-thing) and if the scanned item is valid for the choosen
order, it is registered in the system. Otherwise the user are told that he
made an error.
Using WiFi, this takes less than a second and only requires one scan pr
item.

Cheers,
Lars

 

[josh miller]

im connecting to a Symbol MC3090 Scanner with Win CE 5.0 and builtin
wireless G.

I will try the link you sent to go around active sync altogether, i didn't
know this was even possible.

thanks
josh

 

[josh miller]

i tried the steps for connecting without active sync, and it didnt work. if
i use the VS2005 /tools/Connect to Device
menu it says "connection successful" but when i try to start the debug, i
still get the same error.
"An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket"

I expect to try this on windows 2000 eventually but dont have time to do an
install at the moment.

josh

 

[josh miller]

the steps to connect do seem to affect my error, if i try to use the direct
IP method as suggested, i get the socket error, but if i dont have those
steps setup then i get "failed to connect to device" so that narrows the
issue down to not being an initial connectivity issue but rather some sort
of hand-shaking problem after the initial connection is made.

josh

 

[josh miller]

however i will say thanks because,
that method of connecting via IP without active sync does infact work great
in VS2003, and makes for quicker setup and deploy for me, so thats nice, too
bad the VS2005 does nothing of the sort.

josh