Troubleshooting an older Pocket PC

An Alpha Tester from Sudbury, Ontario shipped me his Toshiba e330 device, onto which he could not get Pocket Pollster installed. I tried on one of my development machines and it wouldn't work either. So I removed the app and then tried to remove the two "frameworks" (code libraries) that come with it: OpenNETCF 1.4 and .Net CF 1.0. Strangely, neither one would allow me to remove it via Start -> Settings -> System -> Remove Programs. I had never observed this before.

So I copied the 3 CAB files in C:\Program Files\Pocket Pollster\MobileCabs\wce300\arm over to the \Temp folder on the Pocket PC. I went into File Explorer on the device, navigated to \Temp and then installed each in sequence:

1. .Net CF
2. OpenNETCF
3. Pocket Pollster

When prompted as to whether I wanted to reinstall, I clicked "OK". Sure enough, everything worked fine after that!

What's most peculiar is that the two frameworks were installed, but just not correctly. What I did manually is exactly what Pocket Pollster does automatically: copy file to device and run it. If this is reported on more devices then I'll likely have to keep reinstalling these frameworks until it's clear that they're correctly in place.

At least from all of this there's a new FAQ that can be added: "If the mobile software won't run then try removing it and both of the frameworks. If either framework won't uninstall then it is likely the culprit and a reinstallation must be done."