Windows (phone) emulator 8.1/10 stuck at loading the OS

12
votes

I've been trying to get the emulator to work for days. Previously I tried the Windows Phone 8.1 Emulator as well as the Windows 8.1 Simulator and both were stuck at loading the OS.

Earlier today I installed the new Windows 10 Tools and thought I should give it another try with the new Windows 10 Emulator... And no, still the same result.

enter image description here

What's strange is that, the Hyper-V Manager seems to be doing OK. I can see the app displays correctly on the little Preview window (see the box on the left side of the picture below).

Also, breakpoints are hit, the project seems to be running OK.

As many answers have already suggested, I tried letting it running for an hour, but still nothing came up.

enter image description here

Things that I've also tried include uninstalling all the Virtual Machines as well as repairing the WP 8.1 Emulator, nothing has worked so far.

Please help, this has driven me completely insane. :(

Update

Not sure if this would help, but if I change the Windows Phone Emulator Internal Switch to use Private network instead of Internal, I will get a couple of warnings saying Unable to determine the Host IP address and then the Emulator will show up with the Emergency Call screen. Not much I can do from there as the three buttons on the bottom are not functioning at all.

I understand that changing the connection type is not the right way to do it, but this at least tells me that the Emulator can work, it's just a matter of how.

11
windows-phone-8windows-phone-8.1windows-phone-8-emulatorwin-universal-app
Low chance it might help but... on my machine for the Windows Phone 8.1 Emulator, the actual problem was my AVG Antivirus which was running. Temporarily disabling it, helped the OS in the Emulator to start. – VasileF
@VasileF I don't have any antivirus ware installed, but thanks anyway! – Justin XL
I have had luck with cancelling the build then allowing the emulator to finish booting the OS ( couple of minutes). After this I am able to deploy to the emulator. It sounds like you've tried all the other troubleshooting steps. Do you remove and recreate the internal switch? – pumpkinszwan
@JustinXL Did you manage to make it work? I have the same problem and I cannot make it work for a few weeks now... – Canol Gökel
@csharpwinphonexaml I just got it working! Finally! Will post an answer shortly. – Justin XL

11 Answers

7
votes

I believe you have two Windows Phone Internal Switch connections and one seems to be unplugged while the other is running. Disable the one that is unplugged and leave the latter. This worked for me after 2days of tinkering. God speed.

2
votes

Try the following.

  1. Open the Hyper-V Manager
  2. In the Actions pane, click Hyper-V Settings
  3. In the Server pane, select Physical GPUs
  4. Uncheck, Use this GPU with RemoteFX
  5. Click OK to save/close.

Attempt to start the Windows Phone emulator VM from within Hyper-V Manager or Visual Studio.

2
votes

I solved this problem by simply adding XDE.EXE as an exception to my Windows Firewall.

Just today

1
votes

Many times it is not stuck. It just does take too long to start. I have an 8 core processor and it took like 5 minutes to launch, I tought it was stuck but it did launch.

0
votes

Not sure if this would help, but if I change the Windows Phone Emulator Internal Switch to use Private network instead of Internal, I will get a couple of warnings saying Unable to determine the Host IP address and then the Emulator will show up with the Emergency Call screen. Not much I can do from there as the three buttons on the bottom are not functioning at all.

when you set it to private network, Windows can't interact with your WP Emulator. Open Network Adapter, and try disable and try start emulator again, then enable again this adapter if it is not work *

0
votes

I contacted the Visual Studio Team a couple of weeks ago and looks like they have fixed this issue in the latest update. And here is how I finally got it all working.

  1. Update your Windows 10 TP to the latest version (currently 10074).
  2. Install the latest Visual Studio 2015 (currently RC).
  3. Install Windows 10 developer tools preview from here (I got some weird errors with Error code: -2147023294. Ignore them, go straight to the next step).
  4. Install the standalone Windows SDK for Windows 10 Insider Preview from here.
  5. Install the Pre-release Microsoft Emulator for Windows 10 Mobile from here.

That's all! After all these are done, both my Simulator and Emulator are loading up fine.

0
votes

In my case, deleting the internal switch from Hyper-V virtual switch manager helps, whenever you run your app using emulator as the target, it'll add a new internal switch by itself and the emulator will run normally (no longer stuck on loading screen)

The problem is, I have to do it every single time I restart my PC

0
votes

The workaround steps to install the Windows SDK and Emulator are no longer needed.

We have released a fix as of 7PM PDT 30 April 2015 for the setup error

Windows 10 SDK 10.0.10069 : The installer failed.

User cancelled installation. Error code: -2147023294"

New setups should no longer encounter this issue.

For existing installations, and for more information, see this forum post: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/17bc9d5e-2ea7-4149-bb75-23997db8bd25/

0
votes

This worked for me:

  1. Go to Windows Defender.
  2. Add exclusion following path: "C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\XDE\YourEmulatorVersion"

YourEmulatorVersion - for example 10.0.14393.9

0
votes

2 days, tried all that is posted here but nothing worked! Finally, since it is a lot easier nowadays to (re)install windows without loosing your files (3 hours including updates), I just resorted to that. Same thing happened, but then I saw the alert that I had not yet activated my VS to run in developer mode :) Did that, and voila, the emulator now works.

If this might be helpful: my problem started when I installed Android Studio and disabled Hyper-V from Android. Enabling it back for VS just couldn't get me to run it again. But I hear there is a way to run both Android & VS emulators using VS emulator for Android. I will try to see how that works later...

0
votes

I know the question is old, but none of the above answers worked for me so I write down my two cents:

  • Go to Hyper-V console and remove all emulators
  • Go to Devices Management, under network adapters tree node, delete all virtual switches
  • Run an emulator from Visual Studio and see the magic happen