Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta and XNA Game Studio 4.0 Beta now available for download

As announced on the Windows Phone Developer Blog and on the App Hub web site, the Windows Phone Developer Tools (WPDT) 7.1 Beta (which includes an XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh Beta as well) was released for download today.

Getting Started links

Here are links to help you get started installing and using the Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta:

• Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta download page
• Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta release notes

Documentation links

Here are some links to useful documentation to help you get started with the Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta:

• What’s new in the WPDT 7.1 Beta
• What’s new for games in the WPDT 7.1 Beta
• Windows Phone developer documentation home
• Windows Phone OS 7.1 code samples

Here are some links to useful documentation to help you get started with the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh beta:

• XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh developer documentation home
• List of new game development articles and samples
• App Hub getting started page
• App Hub game developer education home

Support links

Here are some links if you run into questions or issues with the Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta:

• App Hub forums
• Connect site for reporting Windows Phone Developer Tools bugs and suggestions
• Connect site for reporting Expression Blend bugs and suggestions
• Connect site for reporting XNA Game Studio bugs and suggestions

How to install

Here are steps you can use to install the Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta:

1. If you have any Visual Studio 2010 editions (such as Professional, Ultimate, C# Express, etc) installed on your computer, you will need to install Visual Studio 2010 SP1 first.
2. If you have the original Windows Phone 7 version of WPDT and/or XNA Game Studio 4.0 installed, you do not need to uninstall them.  The WPDT 7.1 Beta and the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh Beta will automatically uninstall the previous version for you behind the scenes.
3. After updating any existing editions of VS 2010 to SP1, you can proceed with installing the WPDT 7.1 Beta.

If you encounter Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta setup failures

If you run into an installation or uninstallation failure for the Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta, 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.

Once you have gathered your setup log files, you can upload them to a file server of your choice (such as https://skydrive.live.com), and post a link to the log files in the forums to get additional support.

If you run into uninstallation issues with any release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools or XNA Game Studio, you can use the cleanup tool described at https://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/pages/9544320.aspx to remove WPDT or XNA Game Studio.