Windows 8 Release Preview, .NET Framework 4.5 RC and Visual Studio 2012 RC now available for download

As announced on the Building Windows 8 blog, Somasegar’s blog and Jason Zander’s blog, the Windows 8 Release Preview and an RC version of the .NET Framework 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012 are now available for download.  Here is some information to help you get started installing and using these preview releases.

Download links

Here are links to help you get started downloading these preview releases:

Documentation links

Here are links to help you get started using the Windows 8 Release Preview:

Here are links to help you get started using the .NET Framework 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012 RC:

Notes about XNA Game Studio and Windows Phone development

If you plan to develop games and applications using XNA Game Studio and/or the Windows Phone SDK, there are a couple of important notes to keep in mind:

  1. XNA Game Studio and the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 both work with Visual Studio 2010, not Visual Studio 2012.  You will not see any XNA Game Studio or Windows Phone project templates or other functionality for these products in the Visual Studio 2012 RC if you install both products on the same computer.  You can safely install Visual Studio 2012 and the Visual Studio 2012 RC side-by-side on the same computer though.
  2. If you try to install XNA Game Studio or the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 on Windows 8, setup may fail.  If it does, you can use the workaround at https://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2012/02/29/10274694.aspx to solve the setup failure.