Caution: if you have Visual Studio 2008 installed, installing Windows SDK side by side on the same computer will affect your Visual Studio 2008 installation. Different versions of SDKs are designed to work side by side but a partial install of SDK may cause problems. Here’s why:
After installing the Windows SDK you will have one set of SDK resources for each SDK installed, located under \Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows:
· \Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.1\ – resources installed by Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5
· \Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\ – resources installed by Visual Studio 2008
· \Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0\ – resources installed by Windows SDK for Vista Update (the \Bin directory here will have the tool set that includes UISpy.exe)
The Visual Studio 2008 IDE and some environment variables used by MSBuild are directed to the location of the last installed version of SDK to find Windows headers and libraries, and tools. This happens because the last installed SDK updates the "CurrentInstallFolder" value under the following registry keys to point to the last installed SDK location:
On an X86 machine:
· HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows
· HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows
On an X64 or IA64 machine:
· HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows
· HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows
· HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows
· HKEY_CURRENT_USER \SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows
If you wish to change the version of SDK resources that Visual Studio uses, you will need to update this registry key to point to the location of the SDK resources installed by Visual Studio (v6.0a). This can be done using the ‘SDK Configuration Tool’. More details about ‘SDK Configuration Tool’ can be found here and here. Advanced users with sufficient experience can update this registry key using regedit. Please review http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256986 before making any changes to your registry.
