Unlock Windows Phone 7 emulator

Question

Today I wanted to unlock the WP7 emulator in order to see some more functionalities available like: task manager, accessing isolated storage files and look over default applications like Office, Messaging and others, but I could not make it work ...

I followed the instructions from here but I'm not having the [YourHardDrive]:/Program Files/Microsoft SDKs/WindowsPhone/v7.0/Emulation/Images folder . In [YourHardDrive]:/Program Files/Microsoft SDKs/WindowsPhone/v7.0/Emulation folder I have only the following files:

1. WM7_Skin.xml
2. WM7_Skin_Down.png
3. WM7_Skin_Mask.png
4. WM7_Skin_Up.png

I looked over others tutorials related to unlock emulator and all of them are pointing to an Image folder - which in my case doesn't exists

Did anyone also faced with this problem?

I am curious: Why Microsoft doesn't provide by default access to an 'unlocked' emulator ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

The instructions you linked to are from a very early pre-beta release of the Windows Phone SDK, over six month before the phone released! So you don't have to wonder why they aren't working anymore.

You may search the XDA forums for an unlocked version of the 7.0 emulator image, but that version isn't up-to-date either. Currently RTM is version 7.1 of the SDK for the so-called "Mango" release of Windows Phone 7.5 - but it's currently not possible to "unlock" the restrictions Microsoft put into that emulator image, either. There are some possibilities to launch some of the internal applications / dialogs with a tool from the 7.1 SDK and their corresponding GUIDs. You may take a look at this and this article for some instructions.