What to expect in the Windows SDK Beta 2 - and what not to expect

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The Windows SDK will be sim-shipping with Windows Vista Beta 2. I thought this would be a good time to tell you a few things you can expect from us from a setup standpoint.

Things to expect:

  • Most important from my standpoint is a better experience from setup. My group is delivering better error trapping, better management up front of setup problems and issues.
  • Many new samples, especially focusing on WinFX development but not neglecting Win32
  • More convenient tools, including Windows PowerShell
  • Support for development on the IA64 platform

Things to expect later than Beta 2:

  • Custom Setup Locations: We're targeting the June CTP for custom install locations. I wish we could have delivered it sooner, but we simply didn't have the resources for doing it right.
  • Seperate install locations for samples: in Windows Vista, samples can't be installed to the \Program Files folder because they can't be modified there. You will need to copy them manually to a seperate location.

That's the top-level view; we'll be talking about this more in the Windows SDK Team Blog over the next few weeks.