Visual Studio 2012 / WP8 SDK: “Connection to Windows Phone Device or Emulator Failed”

Question

I'm opening the default project for Windows Phone 8 using VS 2012 Professional and WP8 SDK, and am trying to configure the Windows Phone 8 WVGA 512 (default) emulator.

Using build and deploy both work. Build and deploy are both checked in the build settings for all build types. The output gives me this:

Deploy started: Project: ABCD, Configuration: Debug x86
Deploying C:\Users\Guy\My Projects\ABCD\ABCD\bin\WindowsPhone\x86\Debug\ABCD_Debug_x86.xap...


Connecting to Emulator WVGA 512MB...

Installing the application...

Deployment of C:\Users\Guy\My Projects\ABCD\ABCD\bin\WindowsPhone\x86\Debug\ABCD_Debug_x86.xap succeeded.
========== Build: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========
========== Deploy: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

However if I try to open the Simulation Dashboard to change any settings (Lock Screen -> Unlocked or "Enable Network Simulation", Visual Studio returns the error:

Connection to Windows Phone device or emulator failed.

How do I fix this issue? I have no headway on this problem because there's nothing from Google or stackoverflow, and I've tried a ton of things related to this problem (mainly the fixes for the infamous Could Not Debug Application error.)

Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

I have very similar problem, but in my case the simulation does not work on actual device (it used to, but now suddenly it doesn't). It does work with emulator. Deploying and debugging works fine on both.

This would suggest that it might be more general problem. Not tied to target device type in particular.