Remote Control WinCE 6.0 device from Windows 7

Question

I am trying to find out a tool to remote control a Motorola MC3190 device running Windows CE 6.0 from a Windows 7 machine.

I have already used Mymobiler with Intermec CN3 device so I tried the answers in this question but I am unable to get it to work.

• I have tried both remote.exe.40 and remote.exe.50 in the Mymobiler folder
• Using Task Manager on CodeProject mentioned in a question on superuser it seems remote.exe completes execution very quickly (or is crashing silently).
• My Start/Programs menu has a MyMobiler entry, so somewhere along the line something seems to have got installed
• But when I run Mymobiler on desktop it cannot connect, its icon in system trey remains gray and on mouse hover says Not Connected/
• In Proof MyMobiler works for WinCE video the processor is ARM920T-PXA270M while my device has a Marevell, PXA32X-P (link to image) processor could that be the reason?

I have also tried ActiveSync Remote Display from Windows Mobile Developer Power Toys. It installs but at start up it shows an error box with message "The OS or CPU of this device is unknown to this application"

How do I get MyMobiler to work with Motorola MC3190 device running Windows CE 6.0? Is there any other tool, preferably free, to remote control this device?

EDIT: I came across EveryWAN and found an installer. It works out of box, but it is not available for commercial use and the web-site seems defunct.

_{PS: I realize the tags are not accurate but I wanted to use something that will attract attention of experts in these similar tags.}

Communication

Can you clarify -- when you ran ActiveSync Remote Display, did you get "The OS or CPU of this device is unknown to this application" on the Windows 7 box after running ASRDisp.exe, or was it when you ran cerdisp2.exe on the Windows CE device? – Skiffle

Answer 1

I want to clarify one answer to the above which is correct. When using the Microsoft PowerToy activesync remote display, there must be an application on both sides - host(the phone) and remote (the pc). The same is true for MyMobiler.

Install the powertoy on the pc.

For the original Poster: This is what your error message means:

In the case of Activecync Remote display, for newer devices (anything above ARM4 cpus - which means, 2008 and up, or over 200mhz cpus - as a very general guide), the display software cannot detect what type of device you have (it's too new, and not in the list).

For the motorola mc3190, your cpu is arm5 compatible,

and should work with software that has arm4 compliant components. ARD does have arm 4 options. see here...

To Fix it:

You must use file explorer on your pc, and navigate into the application folder: c\Programs...\Windows Mobile Developer...\ActiveSync...\Devices\wce400\armv4t and copy the two files.
While still on the pc, you must then navigate to the Windows folder of the device (with activesync running, OR the phone configured to be seen as a hard disc), use explorer on the PC to navigate to the device.

Vaguely, it will look like this: Explorer. > Device (such as HTC Phone:)
Or, X:\ , where x is a drive letter. The first subfolder your select should be Windows. Paste the two files there.

The two files are now copied onto the phone.

At that point, you must, using the phone, load it's file explorer and navigate to that Windows folder on internal memory and manually run cerdisp2.exe that you have now copied there.

With activesync running, and the phone connected to the pc,

You can now run the powertoy active remote display on the pc, and it will communicate with the exe that is running on the phone.

ActiveSync on Xp, or Windows Mobile Device Center on Windows Vista/7/8 must be running for this all to work.

Alternately, the app allows for a networking ip connection instead of activesync, but I have not used it.

When you are done using this app, you must run the kill.exe on the phone, in the windows folder (the second file you copied), to unload the dll that is running.

I can verify this setup works on Xp, Win7 and Win8 - with an Xscale ARM11 528mhz cpu phone.

For MyMobiler, visit their site and get the newest version.

It WILL fix connections that fail, if you have the older version. It's free. They don't support it anymore.

My Mobiler must have activesync running and showing the device connected.

My Mobiler is vastly superior to ActiveSyncRD. * It will automatically install the pc side app, and push the remote app to the phone, via activesync. *Further, when activesync is running and anytime you connect the phone, the MyMobiler app will autoload on the phone as well. That way, whenever you run MyMobiler on the desktop, it will connect to the phone and load right up. *My Mobiler allows full resolution display, while ARD is limited to 320x400 or similar. 640x800 looks much better. *MyMobiler also allows full mouse gesture sends, and copy and paste. ARD offers very limited mouse gesture compatability.

MyMobiler also allows IP connections, but they indicate this is slower.

I am now using MyMobiler with Win8 and a touchpad w/ multitouch, and the mouse gestures send very well.

For Windows V/7/8, you might need to run compatability mode on the Mymobiler.exe file. Navigate to the MyMobiler folder, which might be on your desktop. Drill down til you find the exe. Right Click and chose properties. Compatability. Run Compatability Mode for this file, and select XP.

More Notes:

These apps are slow, because USB is slow.

If you enable Fast USB on the phone, it will help speed up any Remote Display noticeably - however Fast USB is unstable, and doesnt work on some configurations. For me, it doesnt work on XP, but does on Win8 - though slightly unstable at times. On the device: Start> Settings Icon>Connections icon >USB to PC icon. Tick box to enable.

Also, MyMobiler on Win8 will sometimes refuse to connect. Fully unload mymobiler, disconnect the phone, reconnect the phone and watch for activesync to confirm connection. Then reload mymobiler. Sometimes full system reboots are needed, but that's rare.

---

Windows Mobile Remote Controller app on CodeProject - as linked above, looks excellent. It's for Windows Mobile 7 and 8 - which is fantastic. He provides a rapi enabler to allow use with WinMo 6 / 6.5 devices, which also looks promising.

Sg

Welcome to Stack Overflow. Thanks for writing such a clear, precise, and detailed answer! +1. – Uncoil

I am no longer working on this but thank you for a very clear post. – Communication

Excellent clarification on copying files from PC smart devices location to handheld device. Working great !! – Ossify

Answer 2

I've never used MyMobiler, so I can't help there, but how about other options?

Did you look at the Windows Mobile Remote Controller app on CodeProject?

I've had good luck in the past with SOTI's Pocket Controller. It once was free, or had a free version anyway. Not sure if they still do.

Windows CE came with a tool called CERDISP (short for CE Remote Display), which could be built with Platform Builder. I've seen it available as a binary download (like here, for example) on the web before, so no need to actually build it yourself.

Byelorussian

Pocket Controller is no longer free. I will try the other suggestions. Thanks much. – Communication

Answer 3

I've used MyMobiler (remote.exe.50) on my Windows Mobile 6.5 handheld. It sounds like you got it running. Did you run the MyMobiler client on your Windows 7 box and connect to your handheld by IP address? (Right click on the icon in the Notification Area on Windows 7 and choose "Connect IP...".)

It defaults to the ActiveSync address (169.254.2.1?), so if you're not docked and running ActiveSync, it will fail to connect initially (but manually connecting should work). Misread -- you were able to run the client, but not the server.

You can also elect to run a VNC server on your handheld and use a regular VNC client to connect to it. I've built this one for Windows Mobile 2003 without much of a hitch on Visual Studio 2008. You might have similar luck with Windows Mobile 6.5.

EDIT: If you get the message that reads:

'%s' is not a valid Pocket PC application.

when running the MyMobiler client, then that means that your CPU type (or OS) is incompatible with the application -- so I don't think your PXA32X-P is to blame; especially since the MC3190 appears to be able to run Windows Mobile 6.5 (i.e. the CPU should be "fairly" modern, with support for armv4i). But since you haven't mentioned an error that looks like that, I'd suspect that your build of Windows CE 6.0 doesn't contain all the required dependencies.

The first thing I'd check is if all of the dependencies of MyMobiler are present in your build of Windows CE 6. Windows CE is highly customizable; as such, not all software components will be the same across different builds of Windows CE. MyMobiler is built targeting Windows Mobile, not Windows CE, so there's a good chance that your build of Windows CE on the MC3190 doesn't have what's required, while the video you linked does.

With regards to the ActiveSync Remote Display Power Toy, the message that you received sounds like the desktop application didn't know what version to deploy to your device.

Per readme.txt in the ActiveSync Remote Display package:

If you see error message "The OS or CPU of this device is unknown to this application", it usually means the CPU type of the current device, typically a Windows CE device, is not recognized by this tool. The workaround is 1. Find the CPU type of the device (from the manual or the manufacturer). 2. Copy \Devices\wce400\\cerdisp2.exe to the \windows folder of the device. 3. Run "cerhost2.exe -m" on the desktop/laptop. 4. Run cerdisp2.exe on the device. 5. When the remote display is no longer needed, terminate cerdisp2.exe on the device.

You should be able to choose the armv4t version; if not, use the armv4 version.

Skiffle

Don't forget to check your firewall settings. – Skiffle

I have not been able to get it running yet. The device is Windows CE 6, which I believe is very different from Windows Mobile 6.5. I did see some vnc servers so I am going to try that as well. Thanks. – Communication

Ah, I misread -- you said you got it running on your /Desktop/, not on your mobile. Okay, cool -- will edit my answer appropriately. Do you have the SDK installed? If you do, I'd recommend trying to attach a debugger to it to try to find out why the process dies immediately. I'd suspect a missing .DLL that's required by MyMobiler. I'll see if I can dump the dependencies and post a comment for it. – Skiffle

These are the DLLs that the loader shows: CESHELL.DLL, COREDLL.DLL, OLE32.DLL, OLEAUT32.DLL, AYGSHELL.DLL, WS2.DLL. Make sure that all of these are present on your Windows CE 6 image -- especially AYGSHELL.DLL. – Skiffle