Emulator Requirements and Limitations

The emulator has the following hardware and software requirements and limitations:

Note   The Windows Key + L should not be used to lock the system when using the emulator. Locking your computer while the emulator is running can leave the emulator unusable when you unlock the computer.

  • Requirement: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2000 Server with Service Pack 2 installed, or Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition or Windows XP Professional.

  • Requirement: Intel Pentium II or later processor, running at 400 MHz or faster.

  • Requirement: 196 MB of RAM.

  • Requirement: A network card and connection, or a Microsoft Loopback Adapter; to install the Microsoft Loopback Adapter, see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: https://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q236/8/69.ASP.

  • Requirement: To adjust the maximum memory for the emulator, use the following key:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows CE Tools\Platform Manager\{F384D888-F9AA-11D1-BB9E-00A0C9C9CCEE}\{8786CEC0-7256-413A-BAA3-39B5F435A826}\{F384D894-F9AA-11D1-BB9E-00A0C9C9CCEE}\{3F1E2DE3-78A1-4B0E-BDEB-F7088940C1A2}
    
  • Limitation: The TCP/IP transport is the only supported connectivity. TCP/IP transport uses the TCP/IP protocol for communication between the host computer and the target device over an Ethernet connection.

  • Limitation: To use the emulator, applications must be compiled to run on an x86 CPU. The application might be subject to potential differences in x86 compilers, runtimes, and support files compared to ARM-based devices.

  • Limitation: Because of the differences in CPU architectures (x86 CISC versus ARM RISC) and instruction sets, it is not possible to use the emulator to perform very detailed absolute performance and memory footprint optimizations. However, for most applications, this level of analysis is not an issue.

  • Limitation: The touch screen of the device is replaced with a mouse. Although the mouse is functionally equivalent to the touch screen, application developers must give extra consideration to the experience of users running the application on a device that requires a stylus.

  • Limitation: Audio recording is not supported in the emulator, regardless of the audio recording capabilities of the development computer running the emulator.

See Also

Emulator

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