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IE7 and Smart Device Projects in VS 2005

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Coming back from the Holidays, my Visual Studio 2005 installation would fail trying to create a new native Smart Device Project. Uninstalling the Windows Mobile SDKs and reinstalling them... and even uninstalling/reinstalling Visual Studio did not solve the issue.

I was finally reminded of an issue I had seen a while back. Installing IE7 caused this problem! Fortunately there is a workaround. Fernando Zandoná, the PM in charge of our Windows Mobile SDK logged this issue and many others a while back in his blog.

Unable to Create Native (C++) Projects
VC++ Project Wizards are pretty much HTML files + scripts - Visual Studio uses IE to render and present those "web pages" as a wizard. The problem is that, due to the new security model, IE7 does not trust some of those scripts; as a result you keep getting the "New Project" dialog and can't move forward on the wizard. The workaround here is to let IE know that the smart device VC++ wizard is a nice guy and ok to run.

 

You will need to open the registry entry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\PreApproved

And add a new entry named: {D245F352-3F45-4516-B1E6-04608DA126CC}

 This solved the issue and I can get back to coding!

 -Luis Cabrera

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 08, 2007
    hi luis, thanks for finding and posting this information. It has really helped me a lot.

  • Anonymous
    January 10, 2007
    you guys must feel totally defeated with the iPhone.  Can you comment on why the Windows Mobile phone I got last month is effectivly the same as the one I bought 3 years ago.   i'm an IT Pro who works exclusively on MS based networking, so it is in my best inerest for me to use MS stuff.  However, you can be I'll have an iPhone before the end of 2007.   I've already seen the prototypes of the next version of Windows Mobile... it looks to be a simliar incremental update to the product as the last few.  -- discouraging.  

  • Anonymous
    January 10, 2007
    It's a little early to feel defeated.  It's only just been announced and no one has really put it through its paces yet.  There are aspects of the device that look really nice, and there are others which I'm dubious about. For instance, all of my experience over the years has been that hardware buttons are better than touch screens.  I'm willing to be convinced that they came up with clever new ways to do one hand navigation with a touch screen, and I think they absolutely did the right thing by making the hit targets all be finger sized rather than stylus sized, but my initial feeling over that decision certainly isn't defeat. Back in college I was an Apple evangelist, and I still think they're a great company.  I think they get a little more credit for innovation than they deserve (if history holds true, in five years people will believe that Apple invented the phone), but I think they deserve every ounce of their reputation for making great products.  And, despite what I just said, they definitely do bring innovations to any field they enter.  Innovation is good for the industry, and what's good for the industry is good for all of us in it.  Besides, I'm a big fan of competition.  Goodness knows, we've got plenty of it in this space, but more is always good.  I wish them all the best. Mike

  • Anonymous
    January 15, 2007
    Having also seen the iPhone demos, personally, I am not that impressed. It is very nice and this is why we need to remember the downsides as well:

  • no 3-rd party apps, no SDK (at least you can application unlock the WM phone - no thanks to MS though)
  • it's a PDA-phone not a Smartphone, big screen = large device
  • will it synchronise that well with Outlook/Exchange as WM? I do agree that MS has stalled WM since 2001-02; back then my original SPV could do what all phones take for granted today: play MP3 (off SD card slot), play small videos, take pictures, play games, run 3-rd party programs (free SDK & IDE), sync with Outlook (contacts, calendar, e-mail, etc.), even connection to GPS! I do agree that my current Smartphone (2006-07) does not really do more than what it did then. Yes it's faster, more memory, Bluetooth (some even have Wi-Fi) but it is outclassed by comparative phones. Adding more, needed, functionality could have been added but MS has not done so; some you can get through 3-rd party apps, although not everyone will look, try and pay extra for a 3-rd party solution. I do hope that the iPhone will help MS improve WM which will help without needing to by the iPhone itself ;) Adrian

  • Anonymous
    January 16, 2007
    Thanks Luis, that really helped a lot. I just hit on that problem yesterday. Michael.

  • Anonymous
    January 20, 2007
    Thanks guys! Hit that problem and felt like I was in for a long haul of debugging generation scripts or something.  Instant gratification after hitting your blog. On the iPhone: Apples’ UI work is always tops, the iPhone is another example of it, but a lot of the GOOD in mobile device development stands on the shoulders of all the BAD we’ve created along the way.  They don’t have much to stand on yet, so you can bet the first few iterations will be a doozie.  Just the same, glad to see them in the fray.

  • Anonymous
    January 24, 2007
    So how about me, the C++/MFC guy? All my previous systems under wCE 3.0 are down the drain - no more support for ADO in VS 2005 for mobile devices, and all the code samples to use Mobile SQL are in C3 or VB... Can anyone help me? Cheers Alex aevans@leading.com.au

  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2007
    Thanks Luis! I have wasted a lot of time on it, uninstalling, reinstalling, both VC 2005 and SDKs. Now it's working as normal after applying your solution! Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2007
    I also met this problem, now having solved it after reading this article.

  • Anonymous
    April 25, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 18, 2007
    Thanks a lot for posting the fix!

  • Anonymous
    July 02, 2007
    Thanks for your tip, it was very helpful

  • Anonymous
    January 28, 2008
    I resolved the same problem thanks to you. ^^

  • Anonymous
    February 04, 2008
    The iPhone is a device. Windows Mobile is a platform. Apples and orangutans.

  • Anonymous
    September 09, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 21, 2009
    Hi, May be its late.. but all what you to do is to remove IE8, thats all. I faced this problem many times. you can use this link to remove it automatiically .. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957700 gd luck, !FreePalestine!