Installing CE 6.0 SDK's on systems with only VS2008 installed

Submitted by Michel on July 2, 2010 - 23:28

If you are a device manufacturer or are in any other way involved in building Windows CE 6.0 kernels, you undoubtedly also have to generate an SDK for your device so that application developers can create applications targeting your device.

Platform Builder for Windows CE 6.0 plugs into Visual Studio 2005, but the latest and greatest version of Visual Studio that supports "smart device" development is Visual Studio 2008 (unfortunately not Visual Studio 2010, yet?!). Most application developers will use Visual Studio 2008 for smart device development, so that's what your SDK should support in most cases.

You may have noticed that some of your customers are complaining that the SDK installation aborts and rolls back completely. This only happens on systems that do not have Visual Studio 2005 installed:

The reason for these "ToolsMsmCA(Error): IHxFilters filter registration failure" and "ToolsMsmCA(Error): IHxRegisterSession transaction failure" errors is that the documentation of the SDK is trying to merge with the Visual Studio namespace "VS.VSIPCC.v80", which is the Visual Studio 2005 namespace. Visual Studio 2008 uses the namespace "VS.VSIPCC.v90", and the namespace "VS.VSIPCC.v80" is not available on systems with only Visual Studio 2008 installed.

The solution is simple:

Open your SDK.sdkcfg file and look for the lines:

<PropertyBag NAME="Help2">
        <Property NAME="VS Namespace">MS.VSIPCC.v80</Property>

If you want the SDK to install into Visual Studio 2005 then leave these lines as it is, but if you want the SDK to install into Visual Studio 2008 then change the "v80" into "v90":

<PropertyBag NAME="Help2">
        <Property NAME="VS Namespace">MS.VSIPCC.v90</Property>

and regenerate the SDK.

But what if you have an SDK from a 3rd party and you can't regenerate the SDK? Well, to this problem there are two solutions:

  1. Do a custom installation of the SDK and de-select the documentation
  2. Use Orca (or any other msi editor) to change the namespace

Of course "solution" number 1 is not a real solution. What if you really need the documentation of this SDK?

Solution number 2 is of course much better. Orca is in the Microsoft Windows SDK which should be on your machine if you've installed Visual Studio. Take a look in your "Program Files" folder and see if there's a folder "Microsoft SDKs". If there is, you'll find "Orca.msi" in the "bin" folder (if not, install Visual Studio or download the Microsoft Windows SDK here.

Once you've installed Orca you can right click the msi and choose "Edit with Orca". When Orca opens you'll have to select the "Property" table on the left and scroll to the property "VS_NAMESPACE" on the right. Now double click on the value of that property and change "MS.VSIPCC.v80" into "MS.VSIPCC.v90" if you want the documentation to install correctly into Visual Studio 2008.

Of course it would be nice to be able to build one SDK that will install without any problems in any version of Visual Studio that supports smart device development. Without an update to the SDK roller by Microsoft or some more hacking and editing of the MSI using Orca this isn't possible at the moment, but the above solutions will at least give you a way to target either VS2005 or VS2008 with your SDK.

you are great

Submitted by Rajesh Palla (not verified) on April 11, 2013 - 19:33.

I was really struggling for 4 hours thinking its a compatibality issue with windows 7. This article really helped me and made me to go home happily from office. Thanks for that

Windows Embedded CE 6.0 (with Platform Builder, R2 and R3)

Submitted by Josef (not verified) on March 26, 2013 - 14:13.

Is it possible to install WinCE 6 with Platform Builder and R2 and R3? This is the only reason why we have VS2005 on our workstations. VS2005 has some problems with Win7 (or vice versa), so VS2008 would be much better (still using XP too...)

RE: Windows Embedded CE 6.0 (with Platform Builder, R2 and R3)

Submitted by Michel on March 26, 2013 - 22:14.

No, unfortunately Platform Builder for Windows CE 6.0 R3 (and R2, but why would you use R2?) is a plugin for VS2005 and does not work as a plugin for VS2008.

Embedded Compact vNext will have everything (platform dev + application dev) in VS vLatest, finally!

The way we use it is:

Windows CE 6.0 R3
-----------------
VS2008 installed on Win7 64bit and a VMWare Win7 32bit image running VS2005 and Platform Builder for CE 6.0 (no application development on the VM)

Embedded Compact 7
------------------
Win7 64bit machine running VS2008 for both platform and application development.

Good luck!

You are the MAN

Submitted by Don Cross (not verified) on March 2, 2013 - 01:59.

Thank you so much for posting this. I am an experienced C++ programmer, but a complete beginner at Windows CE development. Seeing the cryptic "ToolsMsmCA(Error): IHxFilters filter registration error" dialog box pop up was not a pleasant welcome. (What a truly awful and unhelpful error message!) I typed that mess into Google and this page was the first result. Five minutes later and I'm successfully running my first Windows CE program on the evaluation board! I'm very happy now.

- Don

Thank You

Submitted by Rombosia (not verified) on February 5, 2013 - 15:59.

This helped me like I asked you in person. Thank you so much

Automate VS2005->VS2008 Target Change?

Submitted by Josh (not verified) on November 12, 2012 - 22:57.

More and more of our developers are running into this SDK installation problem as they have VS2008 but not VS2005/PB, but there are still a few of us that need VS2005 - Is it possible to automate the Orca part somehow (I'd like to generate the SDK once, copy it, and apply the VS2008 change to the copy)? I saw some WiRunSql.vbs stuff online but I'm not sure the build team will be ok with installing the full Windows SDK on the build engine... I suspect it may be possible to use two separate SDK.sdkcfg files and generate two different SDKs, but that seems like a waste of time (to regenerate the SDK) when all we really want to change is that one part... Thanks!

RE: Automate VS2005->VS2008 Target Change?

Submitted by Michel on November 24, 2012 - 04:07.

Did you see http://makemsi-manual.dennisbareis.com/using_orca_and_msidiff_to_automat...

There are some other tools available for MSI changes as well, but if you want to use Orca you don't need the full SDK install on the build engine, just copy and use orca.exe on the build engine and automate using the information on the above link.

where is this file located?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on August 28, 2012 - 18:16.

where is this SDK.sdkcfg file all i have is 'Win Mobile 6 professional SDK Referesh.msi' which i got from MS

The SDK.sdkcfg file is part

Submitted by Erwin on September 2, 2012 - 08:48.

The SDK.sdkcfg file is part of the platform builder environment to generate an SDK. For third party SDK's you should edit the msi file with orca and modify the VS_NAMESPACE property like described in the post.

Good luck

Hi Michel, thank you so much

Submitted by Ali (not verified) on August 28, 2012 - 12:32.

Hi Michel,

thank you so much for your help, it works properly by me

Hi MICHEAL,I STILL CAN'T FIND THE VS_SPACENAME IN PROPERTY

Submitted by LIU AO (not verified) on July 14, 2012 - 09:02.

HI MICHEAL:
I FOLLOW YOUR WAY TO FIND VS_SPACENAME IN PROPERTY.BUT I FIND NOTHING.AND I REINSTALL THE LATESET SDK.BUT I STILL CAN FIND THE "VS_SPACENAME" .I DONT KONW WHY.

Email

Submitted by Michel on July 15, 2012 - 01:26.

Contact me through the contact page and I'll send you an email back so you can put the SDK on an FTP somewhere so I can have a quick peek.

That was it !

Submitted by DDTech (not verified) on July 10, 2012 - 12:22.

Thanks a lot. Worked perfectly well for the Merlin SDK by NordicID

Thanks

Submitted by Mike (not verified) on June 21, 2012 - 12:51.

This actually worked for me, thanks so much for taking the time to post it.

Hi Michel: I'm trying to edit

Submitted by mili (not verified) on November 12, 2010 - 14:55.

Hi Michel:

I'm trying to edit the SDK with Orca. However there is no "VS_NAMESPACE" on the right under "Property".
How can i solve this problem

Re: Hi Michel: I'm trying to edit

Submitted by Michel on November 12, 2010 - 20:01.

Are you sure you selected the "Property" table on the right? Did you scroll down all the way on the left? It should be the last property in the list. If you still can't find it, type CTRL-F in Orca and search for "VS_NAMESPACE". If Orca doesn't find anything then the msi you're editing is not a Windows Embedded CE 5.0/6.0 SDK.