CE .NET and Platform Builder 4.2 (part 2)

On the subject of installing Windows CE .NET multiple times to recover from installation errors, it appears that I have found a winning combination. Keep in mind this was after I uninstalled a previous version, and didn't manually remove the Virtual Switch driver as mentioned in the release notes - So, I can't really heap any blame on anyone other than myself, but it was a bit of obtuse thinking to make that a sometimes manual uninstall.

To restate the problem: A CE OS running on the emulator would not be assigned an ip address from my local DHCP server, preventing me from running SDAuthUtil, which prevented me from deploying my in-development application from Visual Studio 2003. I could consistantly install Windows CE .NET, usually without running into error 21337. The one time I did run into it, though, I could never recover from it because the emulator would then always fail to start. Even after following the uninstallation steps in the release notes - and here I can only guess as to the source of the problem - the active CE OS would not run through the Virtual Switch driver, and therefore would wind up with an internal 169.* IP address on subnet 255.255.0.0, instead of a 192.* IP address on subnet 255.255.255.0 for my local network. If I was supposed to be able to access the 169.* address from a different subnet without some other sort of NAT on my development machine (feel free call BS on that if I'm not describing this correctly). The documentation refers to accessing the 169.* address, but I never could, which lead me down the path of investigating the Virtual Switch.

After going through a number of installs and uninstalls, I tried a new tactic. I installed, made sure the Virtual Switch driver was enabled (it wasn't being set enabled upon installation, for some reason), then went right into an uninstall. I removed the CE Utilities for Visual Studio 2003 just to be sure. I restarted the machine and then made sure there were no registry keys, devices, or drivers left from uninstalling. This time, there were none. Next, I made sure there were no running applications or services, then installed again. This time, I didn't run into the 21337 error (I had run into the error on the previous install and repair attempt). Since I didn't run into the error, I didn't use the repair option. Next, I opened up an existing CE OS I had built, and tried running it. No luck. I checked to make sure the Virtual Switch was enabled, which it wasn't. I shutdown Platform Builder and the running emulation, enabled the Virtual Switch, then started it again. This time, it worked.

Next up: Application ConmanClient.exe has performed an illegal operation.