I have recently installed Windows 7 and I have come to a conclusion. While Active Sync was old and did not work great, it did work. I could connect to my devices and emulators after the proper rituals and incantations.
The other conclusion I have come to is that Windows Mobile Device Center is worse that Active Sync was. I cannot get it to reliably connect to my emulator (yes, I have set the connection type to DMA) despite how many times I cradle and uncradle. (The emulator connects to the Visual Studio Debugger just fine though.)
With active sync I had to manually press the connect button in the connection settings after cradling the emulator. The biggest change I can see with Windows Mobile Device Center is that they removed that button.
Is there any way to get Active Sync to work on Windows 7 so I don't have to deal with this? Or is there some way to get it to connect to Windows Mobile Device more reliably?
OK, I have not found anyway to get Active Sync on Windows 7, but I have figured out the incantations to get around the missing connect button. (I say incantations, because getting this to work seems very obscure and arcane to me.)
So here is what you do:
It should now connect.