This is our most commonly asked question !

The answer is very simple - click here for a one-page overview of how to do this.
How to create an installer, containing the .Net CF library files.

The "PocketPC Installer Professional" packs up a set of .cab files / data files, that you would like to install on your device, into two standalone, compressed, installer files.

What does this mean ?
Well, it means that you can pack up your entire PocketPC application, along with all of the .cab files that it's dependant on (such as the .Net Compact Framework .cab file) into one simple .exe file.

The PocketPC Installer Professional creates two types of installer files to give you (and your users) the choice of how you want to distribute your software.

Some users will want to pack up their PocketPC application into a single PDA installer .exe file that they can put onto a memory card, and give to their users.

The users will just need to insert the card into their device, then sit back and watch as the various .cab/data files get installed/copied onto their device.

Alternatively, some users will want to have the same functionality, but in the form of a Desktop Installer that their users can run on their PCs.

The Desktop Installer file actually contains a copy of the PDA Installer file inside it.
When your users run the Desktop Installer file, it will search for a device that is connected to their PC via ActiveSync, extract & copy the PDA Installer file to this device, then start the PDA installer running on the device.

This makes it a more user-friendly installer to have as a download on your website. Your users only need to download & run this one .exe file, to install/copy your set of files onto their device.

Both of the installer files contain copies of your various .cab files and data files within them, along with the code to install them intelligently. You simply need to choose which of the two installer files is more useful to you. Or, alternatively, you could put both types of installer files on your website, and let your users decide which to download.

In Screen 3 of the PocketPC Installer Professional, click on the Advanced button, then the EULA tab.

Here, you can import an EULA text file, and demand that the user agrees to your terms & conditions (provide the text for your two buttons, and tick the "The user must tick this button to continue installing" checkbox).

Alternatively, you can just use this screen to show the user some non-essential notes about your application, with a single button (typically an OK button).

Note that, if the user runs the Desktop Installer file, the EULA will be displayed on their Desktop. If they run the PDA Installer file, it will be displayed on their device.

Almost. The PDA-installer will always display a full-screen image (either your own background image, or our default one), so the user will always see something on their PDA's screen whilst the installer is running.

However, if your .cab files are signed, and if, on Screen 3, you tick the "Silent Install" checkbox, then right-click on the white box on the bitmap image and untick the "Display a status window" option, then yes, you can remove all of the usual install prompts and questions on the PDA.

To get rid of these messages, you must get the PDA-installer .exe file signed.
There are numerous companies that will do this for you:
http://www.mobile2market.net
http://www.verisign.com
Once you have signed the PDA installer file (generally called autorun.exe), you can run the PocketPC Installer Professional program, and it will offer to update the Desktop Installer file (generally installer.exe) to contain this signed file.

Yes, our new release of PocketPC Installer Professional does support these devices.

You must specify a .bmp image file as your background image, you can't use .jpg files.

However, .bmp files come in several variations, and some .bmp files can be displayed fine on a PC, but cannot be used on a PDA.

To get around this, run Paintbrush on your PC (the free image editing software which comes with Windows), load your bitmap file into it, then save it under a different .bmp filename.

Now re-run PocketPC Installer Professional, and rebuild your installer files using this Paintbrush-generated bitmap.

A: There are a few possible answers to this. :

1. Your device's Operating System is running the wrong "autorun.exe" when you insert a card.

Microsoft has specified that when a memory card is inserted into a device, it should look for a directory on that card called "2577" (for ARM processors) and if it finds a file in there called autorun.exe, it should run it with the parameter "install".

On some devices, this simply doesn't happen. On inserting a memory card, some devices will incorrectly attempt to look for, and run, a 2577\autorun.exe on the device's built-in permenant memory store directory, rather than the Storage Card directory.

How do you tell whether this is true for your device ?
- save your installer into a 2577 directory on your memory card.
For example, \Storage Card\2577\autorun.exe
- remove your memory card
- re-insert your memory card
Your device should start the autorun.exe program now.
If it doesn't:
- save your installer into your permenant memory store directory,
For example, \iPaq File Store\2577\autorun.exe
- remove your memory card
- re-insert your memory card

If the installer does now start, then, yes, your device is running the wrong autorun.exe. There isn't much of a solution to this problem, other than complaining at your hardware manufacturer. Good luck. ;-(

If you've put a copy of your autorun.exe file in a "2577" directory on both your Storage Card and your permenant memory directory, and it still doesn't start when you remove & re-insert the memory card, then you are stuck. There is a problem with your device, it simply isn't behaving the way Microsoft demands that Windows Mobile devices should behave. Yes, we have seen this behavior on devices, and no, there isn't much you can do about it.

2. You have the "autorun.exe" in the wrong place.

For an autorun.exe to be run when a memory card is inserted into your device, it must reside in a 2577 directory. Depending on which device you are using, and which country you live in, this could be something like:
\Storage Card\2577\autorun.exe
\SD Card\2577\autorun.exe
\SDMMC Card\2577\autorun.exe
To find out the name of your memory card directory, simply insert your code into your device, click on Start, Settings, System, Memory then Storage Card. This will show you the name (and free space) on your memory card, but it also displays the same details for any internal permenant memory on your device.

3. Your device either doesn't have an ARM processor, or isn't a Pocket PC 2002, Windows Mobile 2003 or Windows Mobile 2005 device.

PocketPC Installer Professional only supports these three types of devices. You cannot use this program to create installers for devices with MIPS and SH3/SH4 processors.

There is currently no way to uninstall these files.

If you have installed a set of .cab files, then the user can go into Start\Settings\Remove Programs and manually uninstall each of these applications, one-by-one, but we do not provide a method of uninstalling any of the other files that you've copied onto the device, or registry entries that you've set on it.

This is a common problem, but very easy to solve.

Run your PDA Installer file on your device, and, once it's finished, copy the log file, \installer.txt from your device onto your PC, and have a look at it.

For each file that the PDA Installer has tried to install, you will see details about if it was installed, and, if it wasn't installed, the reason why it wasn't installed.

For example, if, in the main PocketPC Installer Professional program, you have specified that the netcf.all.wce4.ARMV4.cab is to be installed only on Windows Mobile 2003 devices, but then you run your installer on a Windows Mobile 2005 device, the log file will show you that this is the reason why this .cab file hasn't been installed on this device.

27/12/2006 20:18 : File 1 of 6 : netcf.all.wce4.ARMV4.cab
27/12/2006 20:18 : ----------------------------------------------------------------
27/12/2006 20:18 : Application name: Microsoft .NET Compact Framework
27/12/2006 20:18 : Install on this type of device? : No (WM2003 only)

Another common reason why a .cab file hasn't been installed is that, by default, an application will only be installed on a device if it isn't already installed. Once again, the log file will tell you if this is the case.

Your log file actually does contain a lot more than one character, but there is an issue concerning the way your PDA's "Pocket Word" or "Notes" applet is attempting to display the contents of this file.

To get around this problem, simply drag'n'drop your \Installer.txt file from your device onto your PC, and open it there. You will then be able to view the entire log file.

(Note: This issue has now been resolved, and in the new version of PocketPC Installer Professional - due in early 2007 - you will be able to view your log file on your PDA.)

Yes, simply drag'n'drop your .cab file into the PocketPC Installer Professional, along with the relevant version of your .Net CF .cab file.

For most Windows Mobile devices, this will be either netcf.all.wce4.ARMV4.cab or NETCFv2.wce5.armv4i.cab.

The easiest way to do this is to hard-reset your device, then run your application from Visual Studio, and have a look at the .cab files that it copies to the device.

Typically, you will have one .cab file, containing the .Net CF libraries (usually netcf.all.wce4.ARMV4.cab or NETCFv2.wce5.armv4i.cab) and possibly a couple of other .cab files, if your program uses SQLCE.

It is also worth looking at your device's "Remove Programs" applet, as this will show you the names of the applications that VS has just copied to your device.

You then need to take a copy of these .cab files, and drag'n'drop them into the PocketPC Installer Professional, along with your application's .cab file.

Remember that the ordering of the .cab files is very important. You must install the .Net CF .cab file first, then any SQLCE .cab files (if you're using SQLCE) and finally your application's .cab file.

Yes, you can. We have a couple of default languages that you can choose from (English, Spanish, Swedish), and if your language isn't listed there, no problem, you can type in your own translations.



Once you have typed in your translations, you can right-click on this listbox, and save your translations into a text file.

Next time you create a PocketPC Installer Professional project, you can right-click and re-use these translations.

This is a tricky one. Ideally, you would want to create an update.cab file, and drag'n'drop this into PocketPC Installer Professional. However, it's not that easy, as .cab files don't contain information about which version number a particular file is.

One simple way around this problem is to drag'n'drop your updated files into PocketPC Installer Professional, and set each of them to "Copy if newer".

For data files, you will probably want to set the file action to "Skip if file exists".

Ultimately, this is a tricky problem, and you will need to find which method is best for you, and check the log file (\installer.txt) after installing your Update .cab file on the device, to make sure that the installer has copied your updated files in the way you expected.

Simply use "Program Files" in your target directory name. When you run the PDA-installer on your device, if it finds that "Program Files" doesn't exist, it will work out what your device's equivalent directory name is, and use that.

Your log file will show that this has happened successfully.

The PocketPC Installer Professional will always create a PDA-installer file called autorun.exe, but you can optionally copy the file to a different directory, with a different filename.

You can do this with both the PDA-installer file and the Desktop Installer file.
Have a look at the Advanced Options\Post-build tab.

No problem. When the device finishes soft-resetting, the PDA-installer file will resume installing from where it left off.

The Desktop Installer file actually contains a copy of the PDA Installer file within it.

Make sure you manually sign your PDA Installer file in the directory where PocketPC Installer Professional created it, then reload the project in PocketPC Installer Professional.

You will be asked whether you want to rebuild the Desktop Installer file, if you click on Yes, then it will be rebuilt, containing your signed PDA Installer file.

At the moment, the only way is to Remove each of the files from your PocketPC Installer Professional project, then drag'n'drop them back into your project from their new directory.

However, the next release of PocketPC Installer Professional will have a new "Locate this file.." option, which will let you tell PocketPC Installer Professional where your files have moved to.

After telling PocketPC Installer Professional where one of your files has been moved to, if any of your other missing files can be found in the same directory, then you will be given the option to update their directories aswell.

So, if a set of your .cab files have moved into a new directory on your PC, you will be able to update your PocketPC Installer Professional project in one operation.   Show me!

This issue has been fixed in the latest version.
Please download the latest version, and rebuild your installer files.

This is no problem whatsoever.

All you need to do is specify "Storage Card" in your target directory names, and our installer file will handle automatically replacing this with your actual Storage Card directory name.

For example, let's suppose you have a .txt file which you want the installer to copy into a Documents subdirectory on your SD-card. However, some of your users are using the Dell Axim x51 device, whose Storage Card directory is called "SD Card".

To make your installer work on this device and any other model, you would actually set the target directory to \Storage Card\Documents.

So, you would drag'n'drop your .txt file into PocketPC Installer Professional, then set the target ("Copy to") directory name to:
\Storage Card\Documents.


When your installer is run on your device, your .txt file would be copied to \SD Card\Documents, and, very importantly, we also log this change in the log file, \installer.txt.

This would show that you wanted to copy to \Storage Card\Documents, but our installer automatically changed this to \SD Card\Documents. This logging is very useful if you have any problems with your installed program later.

If you save your "autorun.exe" installer file into your \Storage Card\2577 directory, then some devices will attempt to run this file each time the device is turned on, or comes out of the Idle state. This is a well-known (and long running) bug on many devices.

To get around this problem, go into PocketPC Installer Professional's "Advanced" screen, make sure the "Options" tab is selected, and tick the "Only install/copy the files ONCE on the device" checkbox.

We have put together spceial instructions about this problem. Click here to read more...
 

 

Although we do allow your installers to create Shortcuts in the Start Menu and Programs screen, if you want to create a shortcut to an .exe file which is stored in a .cab file, then we strongly recommend that you implement this in the .inf file that you've used to create the .cab file.

Aswell as making your .cab file "self-sufficient", it also provides better guarantees about future compatibility, as you'll be creating the Shortcuts using Microsoft's own method.