network connection error running CE emulator in VS2008

Question

I have read through the previous answers on this topic as well as other coverage online. But I still can't get this working. I have not worked with CE/hardware code before.

I am working with legacy code for a barcode scanner in VS 2008 and deploying the application as "USA Windows Mobile 5.0 PocketPC R2 Emulator." Initially we were getting an error that the emulator could not connect to the rest server that I was running on my machine. After researching that, I decided to host the rest server on a different machine to avoid the issue. Calls to the rest server work fine using Postman.

ERROR: Now when I attempt to run this solution, the rest calls return the error "Could not establish connection to network."

ATTEMPTED FIXES: I can't get a network connection to work by playing with the settings under: File -> Configure -> then select Network tab on the Emulator Properties dialog. Selecting the "Enable NE2000 PCMCIA network adapter and bind to:" does not work: Every option under this results in an error that "The required Virtual Machine Network Driver could not be found. Make sure that Virtual PC 2007 is installed. You can install ..." But of course, I cannot install because Microsoft has stopped supporting this stuff at all.

I tried selecting the "Host-only networking" option.

I tried using Tools -> Device Emulator Manager in Visual Studio and setting the emulator to "Cradle" set up conn with my ip and dns

Why does Microsoft still hate developers?? :(