RAM Size

It appears that the Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 does not come with two separate OS images for 256MB and 512MB. Instead, it is using the standard DECFG files that I documented a while ago (*.decfg files come from the Windows CE times).

In the XDE folder there are now three configuration boards:

As you can see, there are also two DLL files (config_board and config_board256) that most likely define the OS behaviors on launch. There is only one OS image bundled (that is, one for each OS version – 7.0 and 7.1):

Modifying the DECFG boards

I noticed that modifying the configuration boards does not affect the way the emulator works, unless you want to pass the DECFG board to the XDE as a parameter.

“Windows Phone Emulator is doing a complete OS boot”

If you are launching XDE from the console, you are probably passing a command similar to this:

XDE.exe "C:\Program F
iles (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.1\Emulation\Images\WM70C1.en-US.bin"
/vmid {cfcdc3d0-b974-49c4-b05c-e4bb033f32f9}

Once you do this, you are prompted with the infamous boot screen:

That is happening because you are not using one of the built-in states, that are located in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\XDE:

Notice the GUIDs that are used for the files here and now look at the GUID that you were trying to pass from the command line. The VMID is tied to these states, and if you want a fast boot, you need to pass one of these:

• 106DEFF1-7B7E-43EA-969A-4BC6B52DAF9E – BoardID is 1 – 256MB emulator
• 751F92FB-3952-4FA6-B9B8-0E6985C3E5AE – BoardID is 2 – 512MB emulator

Launching the emulator through Smartdevice.Connectivity

This method was used by me to access blacklisted applications in the emulator. If you build that sample application, you will now be able to access three devices on the Windows Phone 7 platform: