Windows Embedded Compact 7 Public Community Technology Preview (Public CTP) is finally available for downloading: You need a Windows Live ID to log in and download the Public CTP Go to the Connection Directory, find Windows Embedded Compact 7 Public CTP and click on (apply) Download the Public CTP from the Compact 7 Public CTP program page In the next blog entries I'll try to address some of the new features of the new version of my favourite OS...

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For those who wants to use their newsreader to interact with MS forums there's a new tool: the NNTP Bridge application serves as a channel that enables access for NNTP newsreaders to read and write content to Microsoft Forums. You can download the applcation and documentation from http://connect.microsoft.co... (registration required)

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Here are the forums about Windows Embedded: Windows Embedded Standard Windows Embedded Compact Platform Development Windows Embedded Compact Managed Application Development Windows Embedded Compact Native Application Development The first forum has been online for some time while those about Windows Embedded Compact have been welcomed by Olivier Bloch a couple of hours ago. As I discuss in the previous post the public MS newsgroups will close between June 1, 2010 and October 1, 2010, starting from...

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As many developers and MVP's I read and write on MS newsgrousp like microsoft.public.windowsce.... and others. Maybe you do not know that, in a few weeks those newsgroups (all MS newsgroups actually) will be closed and they will be substituted by formus. Following you can find the MS communicate: "Starting in early summer 2010, Microsoft will begin progressively closing down the Microsoft public newsgroups to enrich conversations in the rapidly-growing forum platform. This decision is in...

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Maybe you didn't notice that Windows Embedded CE Developer Center web site has a Learn section: in this section you can find a lot of interesting content in various formats (video, text, slide presentations, MSDN links, etc.) about several Windows Embedded CE development areas, specifically: General Content OS Design & Build BSP & Other Hardware Application Development Communication & Connectivity Silverlight for Windows Embedded For each area you can find entry-level, intermediate and...

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In previous version of Windows CE the flash drivers followed a model based on FAL (Flash Abstraction Layer): the developer had to write the FMD (Flash Media Driver) layer and link it with fal.lib to create a DLL which exposed a block (DSK_Xxx) stream interface. Starting with Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 MS introduces a new model based on a MDD/PDD layer structure. The MDD part is implemented in a DLL (flashmdd.dll) exposing a block (DSK_Xxx) stream interface which handles some specific IOCTL_FLASH_XXX...

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Very often I read posts in the newsgroups like: I call function Foo(dwParam) and it returns FALSE. What's wrong? If I cannot tell it immediately -for example because the dwParam is clearly wrong - my standard answer is: Have you called GetLastError()? Which error value it returns? GetLastError (if the call that fails actually sets an error and the error is meaningful) can be very helpful to detect why the call is failing. If you do not understand exactly what the code means and you have the code...

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Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 is finally available for download here. This intermediate release (while we wait for Windows Embedded Compact in 2010) brings several features, the most important of which is probably Silverlight for Windows Embedded. Download a free trial of Expression Blend to create new user interface experience for your embedded device! For more info on the features included in CE 6.0 R3 check the following links: Bruce Eitman's blog Olivier Bloch's blog Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 release...

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Recently we faced a strange problem on one of our x86 systems: after some successfull boots the system was unable to start the OS anymore but deleting the 'Documents and Settings' folder on the storage device (we included the hive based registry in the OS) the system behave normally. After some investigation we found out that when the system was not booting correctly the USB OHCI driver was performing an endless loop waiting for the host controller to reset (thus preventing the device manager to...

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In Windows Embedded CE 6.0, the kernel and OEM code are divided into the following three components: oal.exe (nk.exe): Startup code and the OEM adaptation layer (OAL) implementation kernel.dll: OAL-independent kernel implementation KITL.dll: This contains the platform-specific Kernel Independent Transport Layer support. In previous versions the OAL and the Kernel where linked together in one executable (kern.exe) which would possibly include KITL support (in this case the executable was kernkitl.exe)....

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