Microsoft Virtual PC x86 Images for Windows CE

As a proof of concept, this evening we have released to the CESD a set of bootable Windows CE Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server images.

The virtual machine image files and scripting have been generated by HPC:Factor are designed to demonstrate Windows CE running as a stand-alone operating system on generic x86 hardware, the hardware that is almost certainly behind the PC you are using right now (older generation Mac users accepted).

The images are free to download and use under the Microsoft Windows CE Platform application, testing and development EULA. In order to make use of the images, users will require an x86 based PC, with either Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 SP1 or Virtual Server 2005 / 2005 R2.

View: CESDS0119: x86 Windows CE bootable VHD images for Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 SP1

Thanks, Chris.. I like the Windows CE 5.0 image .. It works well in VPC2004..

nice, so i can finally have those cenet images that you wouldnt give me last year? or are these other images. now confused.

anyway i'll try this ... soon

Making yourself sound hard-done-by is not the best way to start this conversation. As I recall, and I'm sure you can check your logs, I have made repeated offers over the last year or so to help you build a physical x86 Windows CE install. The fact that you haven't done the prerequisite work needed in getting that PC setup (which I acknowledge you now no longer have) isn't me holding you back from anything. There's no point in wasting time sending large files that you can't do anything with. So I resent the implication made to the people on this board that I have impeded you somehow.

These aren't Windows CE images, they're fundamentally hard disk images.

um, i didn't mean to start a discussion about this, but you would not give me cenet, only hpc2000. that's all.

Thanks for posting this. Is the HPC2000 actually usable? Or should I pick another option? I want to continue working on my program while I'm looking for a new H/PC.

Edit: Also would it be alright to pass this along to my NSBasic news group? A usable H/PC emulator that runs NSBasic could be very useful to some folks.

Edited by carld 2006-09-24 12:30 PM

I have no objections to you passing it along to the newgroup so long as you link to either the News item (http://www.hpcfactor.com/news/?iid=560) or the CESD (http://www.hpcfactor.com/support/cesd/s/0119.asp).
Any file hot-linking will not be met with smiles.

Before you do that however, I suggest you read the CESD and of course try them, because as stated in the news post, these are a proof-of concept, I didn't actually say they were fit for (any) purpose.

Specifically addressing the HPC2000 image: The display driver problem rapidly becomes a huge issue.

The images works great, ... thanks HPC

Edited by iliesse 2006-09-24 12:59 PM

Yes, it's pretty much unuseable as is. I'm trying out the other images. The Windows CE .net 4.0 PDA image works fine so far except the mouse isn't visible. I think it's there, just not visible.

And yes, if I get things working well and decide to pass it along I'll certainly use the links you provided.

Edit: the Windows CE 5.0 image seems to work the best so far. Now if I can figure out how to transfer files I'll give NSBasic a try on it. Though I seem to remember some problem with CE 5.0 that didn't affect me on my H/PC.

Edited by carld 2006-09-24 1:10 PM

The cursor is there, it for some reason fails to draw it, I guess that the cursor resources weren't put into GWES, too lat now though . The web-pad one is specifically setup for a touch screen device. If you have an x86 tablet PC capable of running VPC it should be alright.

As I said in the CESD, there is nothing that I can do about the display driver for HPC2000

Hope I didn't come across being critical, I think you've done a fine job with these. I don't however seem be able to find any way of getting files on and off of the Virtual CE machine. The standard method is mapping a shared folder. Since WinCE doesnt do this (as far as I know) that's out.

I downloaded a tool for accessing vhd files which works but only lets you access files on the DR-Dos boot disk, and not the WinCE image. And since WinCE doesnt support separate drives it doesnt recognize it when you add a second virtual HD. So I'm a bit stumped at the moment, any suggestions?

cool stuff c;amie... although i haven't tried it yet, nor plan to try it anytime soon

just wondering, is there a way to write the harddrive with these images and boot a real x86 on CE? provided that the hardware is compatible of course...

If there's no easier way, I suppose you can always ghost the virtual drive (booting off another virutal drive) within the virtualpc and use that image on a real PC.

i thought sunday afternoon was supposed to be sane

The path to communication has to be through the serial port, but I've not been able to make that happen - I think my null modem cable is damaged.

Takwu, my VHD image is an x86 hard disk image, so it will literally operate on x86 hardware. The problem you have is that it has a closer hardware HAL interpretation through VPC than it will on any current hardware. Effectively making a bad situation worse.

You could literally ghost my image onto a physical cylinder using the VPC physical hard drive connector, but you're losing out the use of the PC, not gaining anything. The VPC approach lets you keep the PC up and running.

Yes of course virtualpc is nice and all... but my main pc a month ago wouldn't even meet the minimum requirements (it had 386mb ram). cmonex has the same spec on her pc too.

on the other hand i'd think a lot of us would have an old pc or harddrive that we'd like to put CE on. Even if it only boots and does nothing useful, it'd still be more interesting to see than win98 or whatever is on it - which you wouldn't be using anyway

question: is there a way to add a network card to this build? would CE be able to access a real nic thru virtual pc, provided that you have the drivers of course (such as ne2000)?

It already has them

The problem is the implementation on the loader subset. Essentially you need a very specific set of ISA bus adapters. VPC supposedly has an adapter that is deemed compatible, however was never implemented properly in the loader. Your 98 PC would need 32MB+ of RAM, 64min really. You can VPC on 386MB, you may need to close things if you're loading it up is all.