Thoughts about setup and deployment issues, WiX, XNA, the .NET Framework and Visual Studio
All postings are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. Additionally, views expressed herein are my own and not those of my employer, Microsoft.
As announced on the Building Windows 8 blog and on Jason Zander’s blog among other places, a consumer preview of Windows 8 and beta versions of Visual Studio 11, the .NET Framework 4.5 and Team Foundation Server 11 are available for download.
Here are some links to help you get started downloading and using the Windows 8 Consumer Preview:
Here are some links to help you get started downloading and using the Visual Studio 11 beta and the .NET Framework 4.5 beta:
As announced earlier today on the Building Windows 8 blog, a Windows 8 consumer preview is available for download starting today. If you download and install Windows 8 and then try to install the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 or XNA Game Studio, you may encounter an XNA Game Studio setup failure.
How to work around this issue
If you run into this issue, here are steps that you can use to work around it:
What to do if the workaround doesn’t help
If you have tried the above steps and setup still fails, you are running into a different issue than the one described above, and you will have to look at the setup log files to determine the root cause.
If you are installing the Windows Phone SDK 7.1, you can use the log collection tool to gather your setup log files. This log collection tool will create a file named %temp%\vslogs.cab.
If you are installing XNA Game Studio, you can find log files at the following locations:
Once you have gathered your setup log files, please upload them to a file server of your choice (such as http://skydrive.live.com), and post a link to the log files in the App Hub Forums or in a comment on my blog to get additional support.
What is causing this failure behind the scenes
XNA Game Studio installs a version of the Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable behind the scenes. Some older versions of the Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable attempt to install and use a file that is being installed by Windows 8, and the older versions of the redistributable are not compatible with the newer version of the file that is installed by Windows 8. Newer versions of the Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable are compatible with Windows 8, and if you pre-install the new redistributable before installing XNA Game Studio, setup will recognize that it is already there and use the new version instead of trying to install the old version.
The reason this issue also impacts the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 is that this SDK installs XNA Game Studio behind the scenes, which in turn installs the Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable behind the scenes.
As announced earlier today on the Windows Phone Developer Blog, a community technology preview (CTP) of an update for the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 has been released. The Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 Update – CTP provides a new 256 MB device emulator image and an updated 512 MB emulator, and it provides the ability to deploy, run, debug and profile your Windows Phone applications and games in the 512 MB emulator or the 256 MB emulator. This update is a patch and not a standalone product, so you must install the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 before you can install the update.
Here are links you can use to download and install the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 and the Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 Update – CTP:
Here are some documentation topics to help you get started using the Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 Update – CTP:
There are a couple of limitations to keep in mind when using the Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 Update – CTP:
This is a quick follow-up to my previous post about using the /? switch to see a list of .NET Framework 4 command line switches. It is fairly common to need to extract the contents of a self-extracting setup package (such as to create an administrative install point). Unfortunately, that command line switch is not documented in the usage dialog for .NET Framework 4 setup or for most updates available on Windows Update for some reason. It is possible to use a tool like WinZip to extract most self-extracting packages, but if you don’t have a tool like that available on your computer, you can do the following to extract the contents of the .NET Framework 4 setup package:
The above example shows how to extract the contents of .NET Framework 4 setup. The same /x switch is also supported by many other types of installers, including many of the updates that are available on Windows Update.