Microprocessor-specific Issues

With the number of CPUs being supported by Windows CE and the variations of a simple core, installing a native application onto Windows CE has become problematic.

Wceload.exe and other installer applications use the dwProcessorType member from the SYSTEM_INFO structure to determine what .cab file to install to the device. The problem is that dwProcessorType may return a number that has not been documented before the release of Wceload.exe and therefore Wceload.exe does not know what CPU-based .cab file needs to be installed. To solve this problem, the QueryInstructionSet API examines what instruction set is supported. The kernel knows explicitly what instruction set it can run for a given kernel. This enables a process to query for the level of support and, in the case of a WCELOAD query, to see if the .cab file should be installed.

The following topics detail microprocessor specific considerations:

• ARM Microprocessor
• MIPS Microprocessor
• SHx Microprocessor
• x86 Microprocessor

See Also

How to Develop an OEM Adaptation Layer

Last updated on Wednesday, April 13, 2005

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