Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC and XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh RC now available for download

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As announced on the Windows Phone Developer Blog and on the App Hub web site, the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Release Candidate (RC) (formerly named the Windows Phone Developer Tools, and which includes the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh RC as well) was released for download earlier this week.

The Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC includes the following changes from the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Beta 2 release:

  • Go Live license that allows you to use the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC to submit applications and games to the Windows Phone Marketplace (as opposed to needing to wait until the final RTW version of the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 to do so).
  • Japanese version of the Windows Phone SDK – we have shipped XNA Game Studio in Japanese in the past, but this RC build enables full Windows Phone development functionality in Japanese as well.
  • The emulator now includes the final Mango phone flash build.
  • Screenshot functionality in the emulator.
  • Profiler improvements, including memory profiling functionality.
  • Marketplace Test Kit that allows you to run some of the same tests that the Windows Phone Marketplace certification process will run and fix issues before you submit your application or game to Marketplace.
  • Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone now supports NuGet to make it easier to keep Visual Studio add-ins up-to-date.

Getting Started links

Here are links to help you get started installing and using the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC:

Documentation links

Here are some links to useful documentation to help you get started with the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC:

Support links

Here are some links if you run into questions or issues with the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC:

How to install

Here are steps you can use to install the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC:

  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 WPDT 7.1 Beta or Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Beta 2 installed, you must uninstall it before installing the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC. To uninstall it, you can go to the Programs and Features control panel and uninstall the item named Windows Phone SDK 7.1 (Beta 2) - ENU and that will automatically uninstall all of the beta components that you need to remove before proceeding to install the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC.

    Note: 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 Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC and the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh RC will automatically uninstall the previous version for you behind the scenes. You only need to uninstall previous 7.1 beta builds.

  3. After updating any existing editions of VS 2010 to SP1 and uninstalling any previous beta versions of the Windows Phone SDK that you previously installed, you can proceed with installing the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC.

If you encounter Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Beta 2 setup failures

If you run into an installation or uninstallation failure for the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC, 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 SDK or XNA Game Studio, you can use the cleanup tool described at https://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/pages/9544320.aspx to remove the Windows Phone SDK or XNA Game Studio.