The Media Center Sandbox

Ok, so I have built an application that is in two parts. A WPF application that allows for database maintenance and a Media Center application that allows for the data to be displayed via media center. The applications share a Sql Server Compact Edition Database.

The WPF application runs just fine installing SQLServerCE3.5 using X-Copy but the media center application crashes on fresh installs (Everything runs fine on my development machine because I have VS 2010 installed) with the following error.

Exception System.InvalidOperationException: Cannot open '|DataDirectory|\TalfourdJones\MyRecipes\Data\Recipes.sdf'. Provider 'System.Data.SqlServerCe.3.5' not installed.

Installing CE from Microsoft does not fix the problem. Does anyone have suggestions on WIX stuff to include to distribute a Media Center application with SqlServerCE3.5

Thanks

I saw the following post on another MS forum that while not related to the question above may shed some light on the issue:



On Windows 64bit Windows Media Center is a 64-bit executable. If you build your assembly (DLL) as an x86-based assembly only the Windows Media Center on an x86 machine will open it.

This has to do with the nature of .NET applications more than anything else. The value of the AnyCPU option is that an assembly built with that option can run on any .NET platform unmodified. Once you pick a platform for the assembly that assembly can only run on the targeted platform.

The short answer is, unfortunately, you cannot register a 32-bit assembly to run as a plugin on 64-bit WMC

Perhaps the issue is that you need to provide 32 bit and 64bit CE?