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

As announced on the Windows Phone Developer Blog, a Windows Phone Developer Tools (WPDT) Beta (which includes an XNA Game Studio 4.0 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:

Documentation links

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

Support links

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

How to install

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

  1. If you have either of the previous Windows Phone Developer Tools CTPs installed, you will need to uninstall them first.  You can do that by going to the Programs and Features control panel and choosing to remove the item named Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP – ENU.  This item will remove the other components that need to be removed.
  2. If you have the Visual Studio 2010 RC on your system, you will also need to uninstall that before you can install the WPDT Beta.
  3. (optional) If you plan to also use another VS 2010 edition (such as Professional, Ultimate, C# Express, etc) in addition to WPDT, you should install them before you install the WPDT Beta.  If you install them after the WPDT Beta, you will be prompted to download and install a Silverlight update when trying to use them.
  4. After removing previous WPDT CTPs and the VS 2010 RC (if you had it installed still) and installing other VS 2010 editions (if you choose to), you can proceed with installing the WPDT Beta.

If you encounter Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta setup failures

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

This tool does not gather XNA Game Studio 4.0 setup log files, so if your setup failure is caused by the XNA Game Studio 4.0 component, you’ll need to gather those logs separately by zipping up all of the logs in the folder named %temp%\XNA Game Studio 4.0 Setup\Logs.

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 the WPDT CTP, CTP Refresh or Beta, you can use the cleanup tool described at https://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/pages/9544320.aspx to remove XNA Game Studio or the Windows Phone Developer Tools.