Application Manager

The Application Manager program, CeAppMgr.exe, resides on a user's desktop computer. It is responsible for adding and removing applications on the Windows CE-based device, as well as deleting the application files from the desktop computer.

    To register an application with Application Manager
  1. Copy the application .cab file to the desktop computer.
  2. Copy the Application Manager .ini file for the application to the desktop computer.
  3. Run Application Manager with the .ini file as a parameter.

This process can be done using a third-party desktop computer installation program. With this approach, Application Manager automatically installs the application on the Windows CE-based device. If the Windows CE-based device is not connected, Application Manager notes that the application has not been installed. When the device is subsequently connected, Application Manager automatically completes the installation.

The command line syntax for the Application Manager, CeAppMgr.exe is:

CEAppMgr.exe [/report]  "CEAppMgr-INI-file"  ["CEAppMgr-INI-file"]
CEAppMgr-INI-file
Full file name and path of the CEAppMgr .ini file for a single application. If the application has multiple components, you can run Application Manager once with the multiple .ini files, one for each component.
report
Optional parameter that provides information concerning the installation process in the event of problems. This parameter should not be included in the final setup program.

You can extract the full file name and path of Application Manager from the default registry value of the registry key: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows
\CurrentVersion\App Paths\CEAppMgr.exe. Because the returned value is the full file name and path of CEAppMgr.exe, you can remove the CEAppMgr.exe file name to get the desktop installation directory of Windows CE Services. You can use the desktop installation directory to copying files to the desktop computer. The location for your files will be the installation directory with your application's subdirectory appended.

Because the installation procedure registers the application's .cab files with Application Manager, the application can be reinstalled on the device at a later time or installed on another device.