News

Windows 7 Upgrades Can Kill .NET 4 and VS 2010 Betas

• By Kurt Mackie
• 08/10/2009

Windows Vista users trying to upgrade to Windows 7 can face some unintended consequences if they also use .NET Framework 4 beta 1 and Visual Studio 2010 beta 1.

Those two betas will not "survive" the upgrade to Windows 7 release to manufacturing (RTM), according to Microsoft blogger Scott Hanselman. He recommends doing a clean install of Windows 7 or uninstalling the betas of .NET Framework 4 and VS 2010 before upgrading to Windows 7 RTM.

Hanselman also cautions that Microsoft does not support the upgrade path from Windows 7 release candidate (RC) to Windows 7 RTM. A clean install needs to be done in that case.

The RC of Windows 7 is scheduled to expire on June 1, 2010. However, the operating system will begin warning users by shutting down every two hours, beginning on March 1, 2010.

People can still download the RC version of Windows 7, but time is running out. After Aug. 20, Microsoft plans to stop issuing activation keys for Windows 7 RC.

Windows 7 was released to manufacturing late last month and is now available to Microsoft TechNet and MSDN subscribers, as well as Microsoft's Volume Licensing customers with Software Assurance.

Microsoft's partners will be able to download Windows 7 RTM on Aug. 16. Last week, Microsoft issued the Windows Demo Toolkit on Microsoft Connect for its partners. The Toolkit is a collection of demos prepared by Microsoft's marketing team to show Windows 7's capabilities to customers.

Also last week, Microsoft updated its Windows API Code Pack for .NET Framework to support the RTM of Windows 7 and earlier versions of Windows. Developers can use the framework's source code library to access some of Windows 7's features, such as jump lists and tabbed thumbnails, among others, according to a Microsoft ISV developer blog.

Support for Windows 7 is available at Microsoft's Springboard Series Web portal. In addition, Windows 7 walkthroughs can be found at this TechNet page. Finally, Microsoft has combined all of its Windows 7 videos onto its Channel 9 portal, according to this blog, which breaks out some links.