Embedded VC++ 4.0 - There is no device installed

So, you’ve been developing a program with Microsoft’s VC++ 4.0 IDE and one day you shut the IDE down and then later, when you fire it up, you cannot run the program you are developing because of the following error message:

There is no device installed. Please go to Configure Platform Manager to add a device.

You thrash around and check everything and it all looks right. You rack your brains but you can’t recall changing anything to do with the devices or the Platform Configuration Manager. You are stuck!

I arrived at this place this morning and I Googled the web to see who else had stuck their foot in this fine bucket. There was one link and it saved my bacon. It is here

:arrow:

When you arrive, search the site for the error message, above. This fellow was developing a SmartPhone app so his situation didn’t match mine exactly but, in the end, it gave me the clues I needed to fix my problem.

The problem relates to the IDE’s WCE Configuration Toolbar. When you first installed the IDE, this toolbar displayed with several text boxes. Early on, I loaded each of them with the appropriate settings which were, for me:

Gena / Pocket PC 2003 / Win32(WCE ARMV4) Debug / Pocket PC 2003 Device

Gena is, by the way, the name of the application I’m developing.

Later, using menu Tools > Customize, I rearranged my IDE’s toolbars and moved things in and out to get the IDE setup as I like it. During this, I dragged these several text boxes down onto the Customize dialog box to remove them from the IDE’s UI since I didn’t think I’d need them more than rarely.

The problem is that the right most of these text boxes, the one that says “Pocket PC 2003 Device” will revert to “Pocket PC 2003 Emulator” when you restart the IDE. And, this text box’s functionality is NOT available via the IDE’s menu system so once you’ve dragged it off and forgotten it, it becomes an invisible show-stopper and you will chase your tail all over trying to work out what setting is messing things up - and you won’t have a hope in hell of finding it.

Once I read the link, above, I went back into the menu Tool > Customize area and tried dragging the WCE Configuration text boxes back onto my UI, but it didn’t work. The menu Tools >Customize area was NOT showing me the missing text box so I couldn’t restore it! So, again I was stymied by the invisible.

Finally, I chose the Reset All option to the right side on the menu Tools > Customize dialog box and it put my UI back as it was originally and I could see the text box I was seeking and it did, indeed, say “Pocket PC 2003 Emulator”. Once I changed it back to “Pocket PC 2003 Device”, my builds would load onto my device correctly.

I’ve chosen now to LEAVE the WCE Configuration Toolbar in its original layout on my UI so I can see when it reverts and fix it.

This is a very nasty problem and I’m damn lucky I found the link above. Grrrr - thanks Microsoft.

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