Another bad Win7 Mobile decision – Developer Tools
Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 developer tools installation fails on Windows Server 2008 R2, despite being a common development environment.
I have an idea for an application for my new phone. Nothing complicated but I want to try and build it and see if I can get it to work or not (more likely). I have a Windows 7 Phone so I’ll just download the tools from Microsoft and see what I can do.
http://create.msdn.com/en-us/home/getting_started
I download the file and run it expecting that there will be an installation and I’ll have some nifty tools installed that I can try to give my dreams life with. Um… Nope – Epic fail here…
The Problem
Both my laptop and my desktop are running Windows Server 2008 R2 – Why? I need to run virtual machines for development and/or a lab environment. This is a great idea since I can’t run a x64 guest on Windows 7 and I got the idea from MS personnel while at TechEd. This isn’t a foreign idea to anyone… Why would you not allow me to install developer tools here when I’m sure, there are people in Microsoft doing the exact same thing!!?!
The fix is simple enough, however why does there need to be a fix for something so simple? Seriously?
The Solution
Here is the fix: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2010/05/02/10005980.aspx
This workaround allows you to install Windows Phone developer tools on Windows Server 2008 R2, which should have been supported from the beginning considering it’s a common development environment.