Installing Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile

Question

Here's the most straightforward way to set up SS for WM.  Reply if you have any installation hiccups.

 

1. Download and run WindowsSideShowForWindowsMobile.exe on your PC, and open the folder it was installed to.
   
   
2. Connect your phone to your computer over USB and select "Open device to view files".
   
   
3. If the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 or later is not installed on your device (it is not on most Windows Mobile 5 devices), install it:
   
   
   1. Copy NETCFv2.wm.armv4i from the installation folder to the My Documents folder on your device.
      
      
   2. On the phone, open File Explorer.
      
      
   3. Open NETCFv2.wm.armv4i in File Explorer, and follow the instructions to restart the device.
      
   
   
4. Connect your PC to the Internet if it is not already connected.
   
   
5. Drag WindowsSideShowForWindowsMobile.CAB to the My Documents folder on the Windows Mobile device.
   
   
6. On the phone, open File Explorer.
   
   
7. In File Explorer, select WindowsSideShowForWindowsMobile.CAB in the My Documents folder. Click OK if you get a publisher warning. The program will install on your phone.  Note:  Installation adds a plug-in which allows you to see SideShow glance data on your Phone’s home screen.  This may switch your layout from what you had previously.  To toggle layouts, open the home or today screen settings page on your phone.
   
   
8. From your PC, pair and connect your phone over Bluetooth.
   
   
   
   
   1. On the device, click the Start button, click Settings, click Connections, and then click Bluetooth. Turn Bluetooth on and make the phone discoverable.
      
      
   2. On your Windows Vista PC, open the Bluetooth Devices control panel, and then click Add.
      
      
   3. Select your device and click Pair. If you do not see your phone, make sure it is in discoverable mode, and that there is a Bluetooth adapter connected to your PC and turned on.
      
      
   4. Select "Let me choose my own passcode", and then enter a passcode.
      
      
   5. A dialog box will appear on the phone asking you to enter the passcode.
      
      
   6. Enter the passcode and then press return. If notifications to enable other services come up, click Allow All Connections.
      
   
   
9. When a message appears on the PC to install driver software, click Locate and install driver software.
   
   
10. After the drivers install, go to your phone's home or today screen, where you will see the SideShow logo with the text not connected (you may have to scroll to see this). Select the text. If you do not see this text, click the Start button, click Programs, and then click Windows SideShow.
    
    
    1. If you get an error saying you do not have the latest version of the .NET Compact Framework installed, perform step 3 to install the .Net Compact Framework. Remove and reinstall Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile by clicking Start, clicking Settings, clicking Remove Programs, clicking Windows SideShow, and then clicking OK. Then start again at step 7.
       
    
    
11. Wait a few seconds for the phone to connect. If it does not connect automatically, click the Connect button on the lower left. Your phone may take up to 30 seconds to connect. If the phone does not connect, try turning it off and on, and see the“Troubleshooting – Phone fails to connect” section in the readme.
    
    
12. Choose your user account on the phone, when prompted. You can change this later by clicking Menu.
    
    1. If you do not see your username in the drop down, it may be due to an ActiveSync partnership using a domain and username different from that on the computer you are using.
        
13. Open the Windows SideShow control panel to pick gadgets to use on your phone. You can click the "Get more gadgets online" link at the bottom of the screen to access the Windows SideShow section of the Windows Live Gallery.

Answer 1

Is for Windows Mobile Professional as well as Standard, or just Standard? (which would be not only sad and a bit weird but also a terrible wasted opportunity).

I'm just asking because of the consistent use of the word "phone", and the fact that it's a Home screen plugin, since the Windows Mobile Professional Today screen is a somewhat different beast.

 

I'm keen to know.

 

Answer 2

Kevin,

 

We do support both WM6 Standard and Professional, and we even have appropriate home/today screen plug-ins for each   Plus, on Professional, we even support touch/stylus input.

 

Dan

Answer 3

Cool :-)

 

Can't wait to try it.

Answer 4

Hello Toby,

 

I've tried to install sideshow on my mobile 6.0 (htc touch dual). The installation on the WM device works fine. The bluetooth peripheral device that must be installed on my pc, however cannot find a driver (universall 1.5 driver?). Following the instructions and what I've read on the blog/forum the driver should be distributed to my pc through Windows Update. However this doesn' work for me.

 

I have an US Vista Ultimate with US & Dutch languagepacks installed. Is it possible that the driver is not yet replicated through all Windows Update Servers? or am I doing something wrong?

 

Anyway, a download to the driver would be very much appreciated :-)

 

Thanks and regards,

 

Hugo

 

Answer 5

Found it :-) You can download the universal driver directly

for x86: http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/ScopedViewInline.aspx?updateid=23859b99-4cf7-4d2d-8781-285b1f4a6b2b

for x64: http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/ScopedViewInline.aspx?updateid=f500bd66-5ce3-434f-989b-0a4145125aaf

 

Have fun! I know I will, it works perfectly, and will be of immediate use with the powerpoint gadget

Answer 6

Hugo Leijtens wrote:

Found it :-) You can download the universal driver directly for x86: http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/ScopedViewInline.aspx?updateid=23859b99-4cf7-4d2d-8781-285b1f4a6b2b for x64: http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/ScopedViewInline.aspx?updateid=f500bd66-5ce3-434f-989b-0a4145125aaf   Have fun! I know I will, it works perfectly, and will be of immediate use with the powerpoint gadget

 

how did you dowload the driver there?

Answer 7

 

Would be interesting for me, too

 

bj_b4

Answer 8

1. Open a new IE browser windows, navigate to http://catalog.update.microsoft.com and download the ActiveX addon.
2. Afterwards, open a new tab, paste the relevant link there and click "Add to basket".
3. Change back to the tab where you loaded http://catalog.update.microsoft.com and select to download the content of your basket.

Answer 9

just use this link:

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/

 

Answer 10

Fails for me, using vista through ISA.

Is it REALLY too much to ask to have a bog standard download link for these drivers rather than having to jump through endless hoops?

Answer 11

I'm totally confused - why can't it work over a simple USB connection? Is Bluetooth the only way for SideShow to work? Looks useless if that's the case...

Answer 12

This is probably the best link because it has all of the drivers including those for simulation, USB support (quit whining) and of coarse bluetooth.

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=Windows%20SideShow

 

Answer 13

can we use WiFi instead of BT? I see a CAB file "Microsoft - Display - Windows SideShow-compatible device (TCP-IP)" in the update catalog and would love to use that instead of BT as i can move around longer distances inside my office than the BT limited 30 feet.

Answer 14

 

What OS are you using?

I'm on Server 2008 and finally got one of the drivers to install to one of the 3 unknown devices. It then showed up as some type of Asian charater set (for the device name) and told me to restart. I have to much going on to try it ATM but will update forum right when I do.

Answer 15

Hugo Leijtens wrote:

Found it :-) You can download the universal driver directly for x86: http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/ScopedViewInline.aspx?updateid=23859b99-4cf7-4d2d-8781-285b1f4a6b2b for x64: http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/ScopedViewInline.aspx?updateid=f500bd66-5ce3-434f-989b-0a4145125aaf   Have fun! I know I will, it works perfectly, and will be of immediate use with the powerpoint gadget

 

Soory about the nOOb question... how do i install these CAB files?

Answer 16

You'll almost always copy CAB files to your Mobile device and run them in the File Explorer.

 

Answer 17

Zac B wrote:

You'll almost always copy CAB files to your Mobile device and run them in the File Explorer.

 

dude... these are catalog files for Vista... they are not for the device...

Answer 18

Sorry, I thought we were talking about WindowsSideShowForWindowsMobile.CAB and forgot we were talking about drivers.

Answer 19

Zac B wrote:

Sorry, I thought we were talking about WindowsSideShowForWindowsMobile.CAB and forgot we were talking about drivers.

 

my bad too..sorry... so can you help me?

Answer 20

I'd also be very interested in a WiFi based connection.

Martin.

Answer 21

We can confirm the WU issue is due to the SideShow drivers not being available on Windows Update for non-US English versions of Vista.  We are working to correct this.

Answer 22

 

I finally had restarted and the drivers which had actually installed without warning prompts (but displayed Asian characters) still displayed in Asian charaters. I can't get it going on Windows Server 2008 x64 Ent. I'll be searching for someone who has and keep you posted.

Answer 23

Toby Muresianu - MSFT wrote:

We can confirm the WU issue is due to the SideShow drivers not being available on Windows Update for non-US English versions of Vista.  We are working to correct this.

Is there a way to install them manually?
Vista x64 Portuguese and I'm running into this issue. I tried downloading from the links above but he won't accept those as the right ones.

EDIT: Sorted! I had tried with the posted links but I forgot to extract the drivers... After that I pointed to the extracted folder and now it works.

Congratulations on making this oft forgotten feature a lot more useful!

Answer 24

Zac B wrote:

I finally had restarted and the drivers which had actually installed without warning prompts (but displayed Asian characters) still displayed in Asian charaters. I can't get it going on Windows Server 2008 x64 Ent. I'll be searching for someone who has and keep you posted.

 

It turns out it will not work with Windows Server 2008 - the driver does not support it, some other people on the board have run into that issue.  Apologies, we are rev'ing the documentation.

Answer 25

Another vote for Wi-Fi here. I'm glad to see SideShow support for Windows Mobile has arrived, having tried it with Bluetooth it appears to work fine in my office and bedroom but it's a no-go downstairs in my lounge or in the garden... Wi-Fi would totally make this rock!

Answer 26

I would really like to see it working with WIFI, too since my PPC does not have bluetooth. Running it with USB cradle would do it for the beginning, too though.

And by the way: my PPC (Fujitsu Loox 520) does not boot when warmstarting after installation of .NET framework. I could only boot in safemode to find out, cradle-connection is not supported. Didnt find a way to uninstall .NET either. Only reset did

Answer 27

I have tried several times to get this to work.  I suspect it is a Vista64 problem.

All software installs and I have no errors.

I open the control panel for Sideshow and select checkboxes for my sideshow device (my i760 WM6 phone)

The device shows that it is connected but it says "No gadgets are turned on"

On the PC if I choose "change device settings" from the sideshow control panel I get a message:

"You are currently not loged in as the user. To change settings, first log on to your user account on the device."

???

I looked at the sideshow menu on my device and in the options dialog ther is an empty dropdown for user.

I cannot type into this dropdown.

 

Q. How do I "first log on to your user account on the device"?

 

Answer 28

Hi There,

We've had a report of a similar issue and what the user did was select the empty space on the dropdown.  Give that a try and let us know what happens.

 

 

 

Answer 29

While I was waiting for a response I was spelunking arround in the mobile registry.  I changed the name and domain of the active sync partnership.  restarted the phone and when I went to do as you say.  viola, my domain/login appears in the dropdown.  I selected it and all is well. It all works.  Thanks

 

 

BTW

I run Vista64 in my Macbook Pro as a second boot with bootcamp tools.

I still have some trouble with the partnership when I access the Vista image from OS X VMWare Fusion.

It shows the Windows mobile phone as connected but I cannot seem to connect.  I am blaming it on the difference in harware drivers for the bluetooth device.  Under VMWare the bluetooth driver frequently bluescreens Vista64. 

Answer 30

Thanks very much for the info - this mobile registry issue could be at the root of similar issues we've been seeing, we'll investigate it further for the next version.

Answer 31

I am sorry for my nooby question. But why it doesn't work on Windows 7 RTM?