[Windows Phone 8 Development and Hacking] thals1992:
The Windows Phone 8 Emulator is installed as a part of the Windows Phone 8 SDK. You can follow some steps below to begin hacking the emulator.

Things to do:

everything....

InteropUnlock

BCD Editing

Well, first thing is first. Getting the WP8 SDK to install.

PREREQUISITES

:

A SLAT capable CPU and BIOS. Some OEMs have only enabled the virtualization feature, but missed the SLAT feature.

Your computer needs to support hardware DEP (No execute bit for AMD).

An OS that supports Hyper-V: Server 2008, 2008R2, 2010, 2012, 2012R2, or Windows 8 Pro.

Note: AFAIK, the only officially supported OS for this is Win8Pro-x64

Access to a user account that has Administrator rights.

Steps for "Getting Ready!"

Set the date to 10/5/13 - one day before expiration (thanks to mister2d.)

Install the SDK normally. (Note: the complete SDK should be installable on any 64bit OS that has the OS version at 6.1 or newer, just follow the tutorial in my signature.)

Install the Visual Studio Update 4.

Install the Windows Phone Emulator - Update 3

Now, most of you can launch the emulator by opening the Windows Phone Deployment Tool (or Windows Phone Power Tools) and deploy to the resolution of choice and to either RTM or GDR3.

I seemed to hit a bug where XDE (the emulator shell) can't create a Virtual Machine properly. It seems to be surrounding the disk being attached improperly.

So.... You can skip the entire part above if you have the Flash.vhd and the desired resolution vhd.

Using the WP8 emulator only using Hyper-V Manager

Open Hyper-V Manager

Click on New, then Virtual Machine

Name the VM what ever you like.

Set RAM at 512 or 1024. 2048 me be a little finicky.

Leave Networking on Not Connected unless you have fully configured Hyper-V.

Select "Attach a virtual hard disk later"

Click Finish.

Right click on the VM you have just created and go to settings.

Click on DVD Drive and press remove.

Click on Hard Drive and paste the location of the desired resolution vhd.

e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0GDR3\Emulation\Images\Flash.480x800.vhd

Double click on the VM to bring up the control interface and press the blue-green "start" button.

Controls for the VM:

Back - Escape/F1

Start - F2

Search - F3

Vol UP - F9

Vol Down - F10

Camera full-press? - F7

Mouse left & right click - tap

NOTE: THE CURSOR DISAPPEARS WHEN MOVED INTO THE VM SCREEN.

Things disable out of box.

Microsoft accounts

dialer (I can't seem to get any of the dialer codes to work yet.)

camera (kinda...just displays a colored box running around the edges.)

Steps to InteropUnlock:

Attach the vhd

type diskmgmt.msc at the start screen. click attach vhd. paste the location of the vhd and press ok.

e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0GDR3\Emulation\Images\Flash.480x800.vhd

right click on blue disk shown and click on detach vhd once done with working on it.

type regedit.exe at the start screen.

Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Click File, Load Hive.

Go to the main partition (the one that has all the links to the other drives...)

and go down to Windows\System32\config (it will ask for permission to enter...)

Hmm....Seems to be interopunlocked already...

More soon!