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Desktop Code Windows Mobile

Desktop ActiveSync Registry Settings

In March I showed how to get the version of a connected device from the desktop. This post documents the rest of the registry settings used to store device information. There are two registry locations, the first at HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindows CE Services contains information about the currently connected device. The second, HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindows CE ServicesPartners contains information for each of the partnerships established on the desktop PC.


When the device is docked, regardless of whether a partnership is established, the following keys are populated in HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindows CE Services:-



  • DeviceHardwareId -String containing a unique Guid for the device

  • DeviceOemInfo – OEM specific string (as returned by SystemParametersInfo using SPI_GETOEMINFO) e.g. WIZA200 (HTC Wizard)

  • DeviceProcessorType – DWORD value – 2577 (ARM) for all Windows Mobile devices

  • DeviceType – string containing platform type (as returned by SystemParamtersInfo using SPI_GETPLATFORMTYPE) e.g. PocketPC or SmartPhone

  • DeviceVersion – DWORD value – see my previous post.

The partnerships are stored with a unique DWORD partnership id e.g.


HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindows CE ServicesPartners12345678


There are additional values to describe sync behaviour and some Windows Mobile Device Center specific values e.g. to specify the display icon for a device. Otherwise all of the above values are duplicated here for the partner device, except with some naming differences:-



  • DeviceHardwareId

  • OemInfo

  • ProcessorType

  • DeviceType

  • Version

Each partnership has a directory containing any resources used, this includes the icon etc. The path is retrieved from the DataFolder value. This is a path beneath the users roaming application data folder which you would get using System.Environment.GetFolder(System.Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData)


The icon is specified in DeviceIconFile and if you append this to the path you’ll have the full filename of the icon.

By Peter Foot

Microsoft Windows Development MVP