Device Emulator Networking on Windows 7

I was an early adopter of Windows 7. Most Windows CE developers that I talk to are still running Windows XP, but more and more are switching. About half of the developers in our office are now running 7.

I understand why people have been slow to transition - especially after the difficulties many experienced with Vista, but I've been running Platform Builder on 7 since before it RTM'd, and I've been very happy with it.

... with one exception. If you enable networking in Device Emulator, you will get an error; it just won't work. This is because of a dependency on the Virtual Network Service from Virtual PC 2007. Even if you install Virtual PC for Windows 7, it won't work -- they made some changes to the drivers.

I've made it for months without needing this feature, but of course once I needed it, I *really* needed it. The good news is, that part of Virtual PC is a nice little stand alone service that you can install and get this to work. Rather than digging in and figuring out how to fix this myself, I decided to first see if anyone else had already managed to get it to work.

I found a great blog entry from Brian Peek - it's a great step-by-step document that explains how to get VPC2007, extract, and install the service needed. Thanks Brian!

-Joe