Network Disconnect Issues during Visual Studio Setup

In the last 2-3 weeks I have seen a number of Product Feedback, Newsgroup and Forum discussions indicating problems around Network Connectivity during Visual Studio Setup. The Visual Studio for Devices Emulator requires to use Virtual Network Switch Driver to enable Visual Studio to talk to it. To enable this, during the Visual Studio setup, we actually installed this driver which gets installed as part of the Microsoft Device Emulator 1.0 (beta) component. Since this is a network driver; windows disconnects from the N/W, rebuilds the N/W stack and reconnect back after a while (usually just a few seconds). In our Visual Studio setup code we handle this and ensure that VS setup continue smoothly. However what didn't get picked up in our early setup tests was loss of connectivity type symptoms which some of the customers are experiencing and talking about in post such as https://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=4233

I am working with the team who delivers this driver to us to make sure that we are adding more tests around these scenarios and identifying the issues behind this. We have shipped this driver (older version) before as part of Embedded Visual C++ 4.0 SP4 , Platform Builder 5.0 and Virtual PC and it does appear to be some regression since the install of these products have not resulted in this behavior.

In the mean time we have also changed the way Visual Studio communicates to the Device Emulator – by using DMA instead of TCP. What is implies is that not only do you get a very robust connectivity scenario we also don’t have a dependency on this driver anymore. With that, we have actually removed this driver from Visual Studio Setup so in future releases (not likely in the June CTP but the one after that), you will find that this driver has been removed.

If you have Beta 2 right now and would like to get a feel of how the DMA transport works you can download it from https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0E05817F-08D6-48A2-A572-CF77ED72C5BE&displaylang=en

The one workaround I see some customers suggesting has been to remove the Microsoft Device Emulator Beta 2 - however that also means that you will not be able to use the emulator for Device Development scenario. The other option is to just un-install this driver from Local Area Connection Properties dialog (see https://blogs.msdn.com/amit_chopra/archive/2004/07/07/175484.aspx ) . If you do remove this; please install the DMA Patch so that you can continue to use the emulator.

If I get more information on this I will update this blog to indicate that.

Amit Chopra