Troubleshooting the Windows Phone 8 Emulator

Article
05/20/2016

[ This article is for Windows Phone 8 developers. If you’re developing for Windows 10, see the latest documentation. ]

This topic contains the following sections.

Before you start

Before you begin troubleshooting, it may be useful to review the following topics:

Cannot connect to Internet destinations

The Windows Phone 8 Emulator uses the HTTP proxy settings from the host computer. If you can’t access Internet resources from the emulator, check with your IT administrator to make sure that your proxy settings will work with the emulator.

If your network’s proxy servers are unavailable or malfunctioning, it might be possible to restore connectivity for the emulator by disabling automatic proxy detection on the host computer. However this only works in certain network configurations.

To disable automatic proxy detection on the host computer

On the host computer, open Internet Options from the Control Panel. The Internet Properties dialog box opens.
In the Internet Properties dialog box, click the Connections tab.
On the Connections page, click the LAN settings button. The Local Area Network (LAN) Settings dialog box opens.
In the Local Area Network (LAN) Settings dialog box, deselect all the check boxes. Click OK twice to close both dialog boxes.
Restart the emulator and retry the connection.

Cannot connect to a local web service on the development computer

For troubleshooting info, see How to connect to a local web service from the Windows Phone 8 Emulator.

Cannot connect to network destinations on a domain or corporate network

The Windows Phone 8 Emulator appears on the network as a separate device with its own IP address. It is not joined to a Windows domain and it does not share domain or workgroup credentials with the host computer.

If your network requires domain or workgroup authorization for basic network and Internet connectivity, contact your IT administrator for an exception. This exception allows your development computer to serve as a boundary machine and to accept connections from non-domain-joined network devices like the emulator.

The Windows Phone 8 Emulator also uses its own set of MAC addresses. If you can’t access network or Internet resources from the emulator, check with your IT administrator to make sure that the emulator’s MAC addresses have been authorized on your network.

To view the emulator’s MAC addresses

Launch the emulator.
On the emulator toolbar, click the chevron button (>>) to open the Additional Tools window.
In the Additional Tools window, click the Network tab.
On the Network page, locate the Physical address entries.

Cannot connect to network destinations when network settings require manual configuration

To connect to network destinations from the emulator, your network must meet the following requirements:

DHCP. The emulator requires DHCP because it configures itself as a separate device on the network with its own IP address.
Automatically configured DNS and gateway settings. It’s not possible to configure DNS and gateway settings manually for the emulator.

If your network requires manually configured settings, check with your IT administrator to determine how you can enable network connectivity for the emulator.

Emulator starts slowly or fails to start and app deployment fails

Under certain conditions, the emulator takes several minutes to start or fails to start due to a timeout. When the emulator fails to start, you see the following message: App deployment failed. Please try again.

The conditions that can cause this timeout include the following:

Running the Windows Phone 8 Emulator from a bootable VHD. This configuration is not supported.
A faulty hard drive. Consider running the chkdsk program.
A hard drive that needs to be defragmented. Consider defragmenting the drive.
A hard drive that is almost full. Check the space available on the drive.
A hard drive that is slowed by a large number of read requests from other running applications. Reduce the number of applications that are accessing the disk.
Not enough memory is available because of other running applications. Reduce the number of applications that are consuming memory or increase the amount of memory.
Generally, any factor that is contributing to poor performance on the system. Begin troubleshooting with the component that has the lowest subscore in the Windows Experience Index, which you can find on the Performance Information and Tools page of Control Panel.

Interference from other virtualization or networking software and drivers

Other virtualization and networking software and drivers can interfere with the virtual network used by the emulator to communicate with Visual Studio. The types of software that may cause a problem include:

Virtualization software other than Hyper-V.
VPN clients.
Software firewalls.
Antivirus applications that hook into the network stack.
Network monitoring or logging tools.
Other system monitoring software.

To ensure that these other applications don’t interfere with the emulator, you may have to reconfigure the Hyper-V virtual adapter used by the emulator. After you uninstall applications of these types, you may also have to recreate the Hyper-V virtual switch used by the emulator.

The following screenshot shows the virtual adapter used by Hyper-V with the emulator as it typically appears in the Network Connections window.

To reconfigure the Hyper-V virtual adapter used by the emulator

Open the Network Connections window by finding and running View network connections from the Windows Start screen. This option appears under Settings.
In the Network Connections window, right-click on the adapter named vEthernet (Internal Ethernet Port Windows Phone Emulator Internal Switch) and select Properties.
In the Properties window, in the list of items used by the virtual adapter, make sure that only the following items are checked. All other items should not be checked.
- Client for Microsoft Networks
- QoS Packet Scheduler
- File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks
- Microsoft LLDP Protocol Driver
- Link-Layer Topology Discovery Mapper I/O Driver
- Link-Layer Topology Discovery Responder
- Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6)
- Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)
The following screenshot shows the properties of the virtual adapter. Note that the entire list of items is not visible.
Repeat these steps if you uninstall and reinstall the emulator, or install other networking software or drivers.

To recreate the Hyper-V virtual switch used by the emulator

Run Hyper-V Manager.
In Hyper-V Manager, in the navigation pane, select your development computer.
From the Actions pane, run Virtual Switch Manager.
In Virtual Switch Manager, create a new virtual switch of type Internal.
In the Virtual Switch Properties window, name the new virtual switch Windows Phone Emulator Internal Switch and set its connection type to Internal network.
Click OK to close Virtual Switch Manager. You can also close Hyper-V Manager.

Computer fails to boot after installing the Windows Phone SDK 8.0

This problem can occur when the following conditions are true:

Your computer has a Gigabyte motherboard.
USB3 is enabled on the motherboard.

To solve this problem, disable USB3 in the BIOS settings of the motherboard and reboot the computer. Then check whether Gigabyte has released an update for your motherboard’s BIOS.

For more info, see the following Knowledge Base article: Boot failure after installation of Hyper-V role on Gigabyte systems.

Support resources

For more info about troubleshooting the Windows Phone 8 Emulator, see (WP8) Emulator (XDE) Troubleshooting Tips.

To find answers and solve problems as you work with the tools in Windows Phone SDK 8.0, visit the Tools for Windows Phone Development forum. To see all the forums for Windows Phone development, visit Windows Phone Development Forums. To review other support options, visit MSDN Troubleshooting and Support.