Wonderfull operating system it is Windows CE! Except for the fact that it is built in a Platform Builder by countless number of eastern manufacturers. They all tend to have their own opinion what to have onboard, which DLL's to include and even - which functions from DLL to exclude. And then the majority of applications wouldn't start on these devices. I feel that they are even encouraged to rip off as many DLLs and functions from a devices as possible as they will have lower licencing fees.
As Windows Mobile market share started to diminish I thought Windows CE will follow. By the way, Windows CE is mostly found in GPS car navigators, while Windows Mobile - that's the name for Windows CE with strict subset of futures - was mostly installed on smartphones. But Windows CE is still widely used in navigators. It was a surprise to me when in 2011 Gartner recommended manufacturers to "Remain with Windows Mobile for ruggedized handheld-computer solutions ... ". I can clearly understand the benefits for manufacturers to stay with old OS as they won't need to rewrite drivers etc, but how about consumers? For the same price as Android navigation device you get the device with Windows CE that is generally twice slower and, what is more, you are locked in. You'll be able to use the software that is preinstalled, but most other winmobile apps would not run on it.
But enough of this palaver. I intended this post to be of some help to developers and users who can't run their programs on specific Windows CE device. First off I recommend you to read this wonderfull post by Lao K. It addresses three most common reasons why the specific program fails to run on a device.
The first two reasons, or heartaches, namely "Check the Platform" and "Check the SubSystem" are straightforward. I would only like to add that you can alternatively use the program ExecutabilityCheck to solve "Check the SubSystem" issue. This application can rewrite OS version in exe file.
The third issue, "DLL HELL", I'm going to discuss now. When application doesn't start due to missing DLL or missing function from a DLL we need to track down what exactly is missing on this OS build. I'm going to propose three ways of doing this.
1. Use ExecutabilityCheck. It can also check missing exports. The problem is, I found that on a lot of newer CE devices it doesn't work.
2. Use an app called TestWM5. It dumps all DLLs from the device ROM to SD card. Then you want to transfer them to desktop machine and put them in directory with your program. Launch Depends.exe now, open your program in it and see what is missing. Is is important to check your program against these downloaded-from-device DLLs, not the ones that reside on desktop Windows with the same names! By the way, downloaded from ROM DLLs are not usable, but they are fit for imports check.
3. Use an app that I've wrtitten - CEExports download link . Put CEExports.exe and file input.txt in the same directory on device. Input.txt is the file you should edit. Put all imports from your exe there. You can use dumpbin utility that goes with Visual Studio for this purpose or you can alternatively use Depends.exe.
This is the format used in input.txt:
Also you can put function ordinary instead of a name. See input.txt provided with program for example.
Run CEExports.exe and it will produce the file log.txt. In log.txt functions and/or DLLs missing will be listed.
If DLL couldn't be opened last error code will be mentioned. It means that you can check your own DLLs for compatabilty. If the DLL can't be opened for compatability reasons last error might be 193 (ERROR_BAD_EXE_FORMAT), if DLL can't be found you should see something like 126 (ERROR_MOD_NOT_FOUND). When you run CEExports with provided input.txt you would see log contents like:
I intentionally checked for function ordinal 10000 in coredll which isn't exported. Further I'm checking for the presence of superduper.dll which can't be found. All other DLLs where succesfully opened, and 4 functions I check for are in place.
Hope you'll find these techniques for locating missing Windows CE exports usefull.
As Windows Mobile market share started to diminish I thought Windows CE will follow. By the way, Windows CE is mostly found in GPS car navigators, while Windows Mobile - that's the name for Windows CE with strict subset of futures - was mostly installed on smartphones. But Windows CE is still widely used in navigators. It was a surprise to me when in 2011 Gartner recommended manufacturers to "Remain with Windows Mobile for ruggedized handheld-computer solutions ... ". I can clearly understand the benefits for manufacturers to stay with old OS as they won't need to rewrite drivers etc, but how about consumers? For the same price as Android navigation device you get the device with Windows CE that is generally twice slower and, what is more, you are locked in. You'll be able to use the software that is preinstalled, but most other winmobile apps would not run on it.
But enough of this palaver. I intended this post to be of some help to developers and users who can't run their programs on specific Windows CE device. First off I recommend you to read this wonderfull post by Lao K. It addresses three most common reasons why the specific program fails to run on a device.
The first two reasons, or heartaches, namely "Check the Platform" and "Check the SubSystem" are straightforward. I would only like to add that you can alternatively use the program ExecutabilityCheck to solve "Check the SubSystem" issue. This application can rewrite OS version in exe file.
The third issue, "DLL HELL", I'm going to discuss now. When application doesn't start due to missing DLL or missing function from a DLL we need to track down what exactly is missing on this OS build. I'm going to propose three ways of doing this.
1. Use ExecutabilityCheck. It can also check missing exports. The problem is, I found that on a lot of newer CE devices it doesn't work.
2. Use an app called TestWM5. It dumps all DLLs from the device ROM to SD card. Then you want to transfer them to desktop machine and put them in directory with your program. Launch Depends.exe now, open your program in it and see what is missing. Is is important to check your program against these downloaded-from-device DLLs, not the ones that reside on desktop Windows with the same names! By the way, downloaded from ROM DLLs are not usable, but they are fit for imports check.
3. Use an app that I've wrtitten - CEExports download link . Put CEExports.exe and file input.txt in the same directory on device. Input.txt is the file you should edit. Put all imports from your exe there. You can use dumpbin utility that goes with Visual Studio for this purpose or you can alternatively use Depends.exe.
This is the format used in input.txt:
[DLLNAME.DLL] Functionname1 Functionname2 [DLLNAME.DLL] Functionname1 Functionname2
Also you can put function ordinary instead of a name. See input.txt provided with program for example.
Run CEExports.exe and it will produce the file log.txt. In log.txt functions and/or DLLs missing will be listed.
If DLL couldn't be opened last error code will be mentioned. It means that you can check your own DLLs for compatabilty. If the DLL can't be opened for compatability reasons last error might be 193 (ERROR_BAD_EXE_FORMAT), if DLL can't be found you should see something like 126 (ERROR_MOD_NOT_FOUND). When you run CEExports with provided input.txt you would see log contents like:
10000 function ordinal is not exported from COREDLL.dll SUPERDUPERDLL.DLL library not found Last error code: 126 Total number of functions checked: 5 Total number of functions missing: 1
I intentionally checked for function ordinal 10000 in coredll which isn't exported. Further I'm checking for the presence of superduper.dll which can't be found. All other DLLs where succesfully opened, and 4 functions I check for are in place.
Hope you'll find these techniques for locating missing Windows CE exports usefull.
