http://windowsasusual.blogspot.jp/2013/01/how-to-launch-windows-phone-8-emulator.html
Hardware requirements
First possible pitfall is... your CPU! In short, you passed this step if
you have Intel i3/i5/i7 processor as they all do Second Level Address
Translation (SLAT) capability. Otrherwise, you should check this brilliant wiki for extended description.
OK, let assume you have capable CPU. Let investigate in details what happens if you try to launch WP8 emulator then.
Where is my virtualization, dude?
While you're trying to first-launch your WP8 hello-world project, the following popup appears:
| Windows Phone Emulator |
| You don't have permission to modify internal Hyper-V network adapter settings required to run the emulator |
| Click "Retry" to run the emulator in elevated mode. |
| [Retry] [Close] |
Clicking on [Retry] button, emulator window appears saying it launching
the OS... and after a couple of minutes, "Generic failure" popup
terminates that pity show.
To resolve this, let take a look at VmWare virtualization settings. You
can edit virtual machine settings and make sure that "Processor" device
has "Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI" flag as ticked on.
Alternatively, you can manually edit VMX file of your virtual machine
image and set this option as true:
|
vhv.enable = "TRUE" |
Both ways, you have to switch the virtual machine off before, make changes, then start the virtual machine again. Try again to launch your WP8 hello-world project. You see? Same failure, again.
VmWare hidden treasure
Rumor has it. VmWare Workstation 9, the latest "mature" product of
VmWare Inc will let WP8 emulator working as a charm if virtualization
flag (see previous chapter) is on. In my case, I have only Player
edition, but the same rumor (namely StackOverflow.com, see URL above)
says you can manage non-official keys at VMX file, and following
addendum will do the trick:
|
vhv.enable = "TRUE" hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "FALSE" |
See the last line? That's it, shaman said you have to set this to false. And it works! The only popup you can face now is
| Windows Phone Emulator |
| Do you want to configure the emulator to connect to the Internet? |
| Your PC may lose its network connectivity while the changes are applied. This may affect any network operations in progress. |
| [Yes] [No] |
Clicking [Yes] you will see very short delay and then, ta-da, your emulator is fully operational! Shaman said, set this to false. Shaman doesn't explain. Follow the word of Shaman, do you?
Disobey the word
Feeling some contradiction sense, I tried to flip the non-documented
settings to true, expecting the punishment from Heavens. But nothing has
been changed! Finally I cropped the cpuid line to empty value:
|
vhv.enable = "TRUE" hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "" |
Again, emulator still working as a charm! Switching off the virtual machine, rebuilding the project - still operational. Just the cpuid key presence is a "key to success" for WP8 emulator. True, false, empty value - everything suits us. Hmmm, that's interesting!
Failure ahead!
Thanks to the same contradiction sense, I did the following tweak at VMX file:
|
vhv.enable = "FALSE" hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "" |
Namely, I switched off the virtualization support but keep that non-documented cpuid setting active. Restarting the virtual machine, I was expecting the failure. But I was really surprised with new (and very clear) popup:
| Windows Phone Emulator |
| Can't start the Windows Phone Emulator |
| The Windows Phone Emulator requires Hyper-V. Your PC is missing the following pre-requisites required to run Hyper-V:
- Second Level Address Translation |
| [Close] |
You see? It complains about SLAT support feature, like we don't have
capable CPU! But host CPU is Intel i7-930, with SLAT feature onboard.
So, with virtualization off AND with cpuid on, guest OS will provide
exact error message instead of abstract "lack of permission".
Note: Don't forget to re-enable virtualization support back to operational state!
Other reasons to fail
To be fair, there are more ways to get WP8 emulator failed to run. Let
me name two more (if you know another reason, just post a comment here,
big thanks in advance):
- Insufficient CPU cores
- Not enough memory
Reason 1: WP8 as a platform intends at least two CPU cores available. So if you allocate single core for your virtual machine, emulator will fail with following message:
| Windows Phone Emulator |
| The Windows Phone Emulator wasn't able to ensure the virtual machine was running:
Something happened while starting a virtual machine: 'Emulator WVGA 512MB.user' could not initialize. (Virtual machine ID XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX) The processor topology specified for the virtual machine cannot be supported by this host. For instance, this can happen when the virtual processor or socket count for the virtual machine exceeds the logical processor or socket count for the host. |
| [Close] |
Reason 2 : memory, RAM size. In old good days it was a useful habit to allocate not more than 1 gig of RAM to any virtual machine, otherwise your host OS may nearly die. For WP8 development, it's not true anymore. With 1Gb RAM limit, WP8 emulator will unable to get 512Mb of free RAM. Popup message is clear:
| Windows Phone Emulator |
| The Windows Phone Emulator wasn't able to ensure the virtual machine was running:
Something happened while starting a virtual machine: 'Emulator WVGA 512MB.user' could not initialize. (Virtual machine ID XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX) Not enough memory in the system to start the virtual machine Emulator WVGA 512MB.user with ram size 512 megabytes. (Virtual machine ID XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX) |
| [Close] |
So, it's nice to allocate at least 1.5Gb RAM for our virtual machine. And even that case, you can't launch WP8 emulators other than simplest 512Mb mode. Bye-bye, WVGA/WXGA/720p emulators, you're too memory-hungry!
Update: one more issue with Windows Phone 8 emulator is adderssed here: http://www.timmykokke.com/2013/01/windows-phone-emulator-hyper-v-error
Recap
Despite the two-level virtuality (WP8 emulator is a Hyper-V virtual
machine which launched on Win8 guest OS under VmWare running on Win7
host), the toolchain is stable and performs with almost no delays. This
contradicts with my previous experience of double-virtualization while
launching Meego on Qemu running at Linux guest at Windows host (terrible
delays up to 20-30 seconds on each mouse movement).
So, everything is fine. The only requirements are:
- SLAT-capable CPU (any of Intel i-series, plus some others)
- virtualization enabled at BIOS level
- "non-documented" key hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "" at VMX file
- virtual machine with enabled virtualization as vhv.enable = "TRUE"
- at least two CPU cores for the virtual machine
- at least 1.5Gb RAM for the virtual machine, 4Gb recommended (if you plan to launch any WP8 emulator), which naturally leads to 64-bit host OS, with at least 8Gb RAM onboard