Going Virtual II: Remote Debugging

Learn how to set up remote debugging when you are running the Windows XP Embedded image inside Virtual PC.

Last month we took a look at booting and running Windows XP Embedded in Microsoft Virtual PC. There are a number of advantages to booting and running Windows XP Embedded in the Virtual PC environment. First, you don't need additional hardware. Second, you can build and test your Windows XP Embedded image on your development PC without needing to dual-boot your development PC. The other really neat thing about running the Windows XP Embedded image inside Virtual PC is the ability to remote debug applications on your development PC, which is going to be the focus for this month's article.

Why would you need to debug an application running on Windows XP Embedded? Since XPE is a componentized version of Windows XP Professional there should be binary compatibility for the applications you are already running on the desktop, right? The answer is "yes," your applications 'should' run, unmodified, on Windows XP Embedded. This assumes that you have included all the required operating system components, and have added all the support files your application needs (DLLs, fonts, bitmaps, audio files, movie files, data files, etc.).

For this month's article we're going to write a fully featured Win32 application (a typical Hello World application) and build and deploy this application to a Windows XP Embedded operating system image, then debug the application.

The steps outlined in this article are of course applicable to a Windows XP Embedded image running on "real" hardware. Time to buckle up, let's get cracking with writing and debugging an application.