How to run the Windows Phone 10 Emulator?

Question

I'm lost while searching how to start the Windows Phone 10 Emulator.

What I already did:
I downloaded the Emulator image and installed it (I know the location of the flash.vhd file)

I'm running Windows 8.1 x64 Professional. The Hyper-V service seems to be running. If I run coreinfo -v I get this output:

Coreinfo v3.31 - Dump information on system CPU and memory topology
Copyright (C) 2008-2014 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

Note: Coreinfo must be executed on a system without a hypervisor running for
accurate results.

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Intel64 Family 6 Model 60 Stepping 3, GenuineIntel
Microcode signature: 0000001A
HYPERVISOR      *       Hypervisor is present
VMX             -       Supports Intel hardware-assisted virtualization
EPT             -       Supports Intel extended page tables (SLAT)

Here is my MachineSLATStatusCheck output:

You have a SLAT capable machine.

I guess that my computer meets the hardware requirements, but how do I start the emulator?

By the way I have only VS 2012 installed, but I don't want to upgrade it. I just need the emulator for now.

Mccourt

Answer 1

The emulator's executable is \Program Files (x86)\Microsoft XDE\xde.exe

Run it with /? to get help on the arguments.

Here's how (a slightly out of date) VS 2015 launches it for me (gleaned from procexp). Update this to your folders and options and it should launch the emulator from the command line:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft XDE\10.0.1.0\XDE.exe" /name "Emulator 10.0.1.0 WVGA 4 inch 512MB.rob" /displayName "Emulator 10.0.1.0 WVGA 4 inch 512MB" /vhd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Emulation\Mobile\10.0.1.0\Flash.vhd" /video "480x854" /memsize 512 /diagonalSize 4 /language 409 /creatediffdisk "C:\Users\Rob\AppData\Local\Microsoft\XDE\10.0.1.0\dd.480x854.512.vhd" /snapshot /fastShutdown

Bathe

Why is there no executable that I could just run to get an emulator with a few default apps (including Edge) installed? On iOS it's dead easy; you install Xcode and you run the simulator from the menu. That's it. This is really frustrating. The initial experience does matter, I've now kind of lost the desire to try the emulator & test on it. – Redbud

There's more: running xde.exe /? displays the usage in a popup, not inline in the console. And you can't copy text from this popup. – Redbud

Actually you can copy text from nearly every popup in windows by just pressing CTRL+C in the popup. You then copy the entire content of it. Yes: Still not very convenient. – Quadragesima