Odd Application Behavior After Installation

Greetings,

I am doing some work that involves using a port splitter application on a generic touchscreen GPS device running Windows CE 6.

The port splitter application I am using is Franson GpsGate (Client). The cab file extracts and an installs the application fine and I am able to run the application after installation. However, once the unit is powered off, the shortcut disappears from the programs list. Furthermore if you manually navigate to the .exe file and attempt to execute it, the application will not start, nor does it provide any type of error message.

I have inspected the registry and the entry for the application has been properly persisted.

Have any of you ever experienced anything similar?

Your application might install a few files to /windows. If thats the case a lot of ce6 devices "clear" /windows at power off/on of any newly added files. I dont know if it is supposed to be a safety feature so you cant easily brick your device or what, but it is a tad annoying. You could check to see if your app does indeed copy a few files to /windows and if so copy them to that applications folder. That *should* solve the issue.

Cheers

Greetings RTFM and thank you for your quick response.

I was able to confirm that the installation adds a .UNLOAD file to the /Windows folder and a .DAT file to the /Windows/AppMgr folder, which it also creates.

I tried your suggestion, but the behavior remained unchanged. So I reinstalled and then changed the properties of the .DAT and the .LNK (shortcut) file to read only. Both files disappear when the unit is powered off and again the application will not execute.

Try going into the registry and changing the value for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/Explorer/Shell Folders/Windows from "\Windows" to "\[name of flash storage folder]\Windows" with the actual name the device assigns to the flash storage folder in place of the bracketed text. Then create a \Windows folder inside the flash storage folder if there isn't one already, and install the application there.

Greetings CE Geek and thank you for your post.

I tried your suggestion with no luck. I also tried the steps outlined in the this post http://www.hpcfactor.com/support/cesd/s/0127.asp on the forum. This approach kept the shortcut in the program files list after power off, but the application will still not execute after reboot.

I have also reached out to the manufacturer, but have received no response. At this point I think I will have to consider a different serial splitter such as Eltima's Serial Splitter Mobile. Too bad, the Franson product looked promising. Thank you to those who responded. If anyone else has any theories, I'd be interested in hearing them and trying them out, since the cost differential between the 2 serial splitter products is considerable.

Regards

Sounds like it's installing some files to \Windows even when you tell it not to. Try extracting the CAB file on a PC using MSCEInf, and then put the contents of the \Windows folder from the extracted CAB in the \Windows folder inside the flash storage folder. Then run the contents of the \Program Files folder from the extracted CAB from an SD card (or copy it into the flash storage folder and run it from there).