I installed a new Windows Phone 7 template this week in Visual Studio, and now every time I open a project, VS sets the default debugging environment to target my physical phone instead of the emulator. It’s annoying, because 9 times out of 10 I want to debug locally, and I hit F5 only to get the “Zune software is not launched. Retry after making sure that Zune software is launched.” error.
Has anyone figured out how to set the default back to the Windows Phone 7 emulator?
Default Deployment Target
When you install the January 2011 Update, the default deployment target for Windows Phone Projects in Visual Studio changes to Windows Phone 7 Device. You can change the default target to Windows Phone 7 Emulator by using the following steps:
Source