title: Visual studio 2015 cannot connect to Windows Phone 8.1 emulator
body: <p>I am facing an issue connecting to a Windows Phone 8.1 emulator from Visual Studio.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Environment:</strong></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Windows 8.1 enterprise</li>
  <li>Visual Studio 2015, update 2</li>
  <li>Cordova 5.3.3</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><strong>When the error occurs:</strong></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>After creating a Cordova project (from the cmd line) for Windows 8 platform (which covers Windows Phone 8.1; not wp8 which covers only WP 7 and 8), I open it in Visual Studio, try to debug it on one of the Windows Phone 8.1 emulators which come with VS (targeted architecture: "Any CPU")</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><strong>Error:</strong></p>
  
  <p>Right after or during the emulator boot:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Error message: <em>"Bootstrapper could not connect to machine"</em></li>
  <li>Two errors in the log of VS: <em>"DEP6701: Boostrapping failed with unexpected error: 'Referenced package not found…"</em> and <em>"DEP0001 : Unexpected Error: DEP0001 : Unexpected error: -1988946668"</em></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><strong>What I have tried:</strong> </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Turned virtualisation off and on again in the BIOS</li>
  <li>Ensured Hyper-V was enabled</li>
  <li>Checked the emulator for "developer settings" or something similar, but didn't find anything - apparently not required at an emulator level, and anyway it seems unrelated to the error, which suggests VS cannot connect to the emulator</li>
  <li>Changing the connection type of the WP emulator virtual switch in the Hyper-V manager: initially internal network, also tried private network and external network</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I am new to Windows Phone development and am kind of out of ideas. Nothing I found on Stack overflow helped. The error seems to suggest the configuration of VS is not adapted to the emulator: it can't connect to it.</p>
  
  <p>Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.</p>