Back in 2007, Microsoft made available for download a set of tools designed to allow developers to better leverage the .NET Compact Framework 3.5. Dubbed the Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework 3.5, the collection of utilities offered developers various tools among which NetCFSvcUtil.exe. The original .NET Compact Framework ServiceModel Metadata Tool failed to play nice with the latest iteration of the Windows client and server operating system, as well as with the most recent releases of previously available Windows platforms. However, thanks to the work done by the Windows Mobile Developer team this is no longer the case.

“NETCF ServiceModel Metadata Tool – The .NET Compact Framework ServiceModel Metadata Tool (netcfsvcutil.exe) allows you to generate a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) client proxy to help developers consume WCF services on device. Like svcutil.exe, which is the desktop version of the utility, netcfsvcutil.exe is a command-line tool that generates service model code from metadata documents and generates metadata documents from service model code,” Microsoft revealed.

Habib Heydarian, a program manager at Microsoft working in the Visual Studio group, revealed that a patch was available for download. Developers that have been leveraging the NETCF ServiceModel Metadata Toot in concert with the .NET Compact Framework 3.5 will now be able to run the power toy on Windows 7. However, the patch also allows NetCFSvcUtil.exe to work on Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 in addition to Windows 7.

“Specifically, when you try to run [the original] NetCFSvcUtil.exe on these operating systems, you might see the following error message: Error: An error occurred in the tool. Error: Error in the application. The good news is that the Windows Mobile Developer team released a patch today that fixes this problem. You can download the new version of NetCFSvcUtil from here,” Heydarian stated.