Possible issue related to out-of-order install of XNA Game Studio 4.0 and Windows Phone SDK 7.1

  • Article

The Windows Phone SDK 7.1 includes a step to install the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh.  Behind the scenes, the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh installer has logic to detect if the computer has the original version of XNA Game Studio 4.0 installed.  If so, the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh installer will automatically uninstall XNA Game Studio 4.0 because the refresh is a super-set of the original version and there is no need to have both installed at the same time.

However, there is an installation ordering issue that can end up causing problems.  The original XNA Game Studio 4.0 installer does not have any knowledge about the refresh, so if you run the installer for the original version of XNA Game Studio 4.0 on a computer that already has the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh installed, setup will run in repair mode and it will let you attempt to “repair” XNA Game Studio 4.0.  If you do this, you will end up with a mixed and matched set of components from the original version of XNA Game Studio 4.0 and the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh.  Once a computer gets into this state, attempting to uninstall either one of the versions of XNA Game Studio will only partially remove it because some of the components are shared by both versions.

If you accidentally install the original version of XNA Game Studio 4.0 onto a computer that already has the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh, here are some steps that will allow you to clean things up and get back to a consistent set of XNA Game Studio 4.0 components:

  1. Go to the Programs and Features control panel.
  2. Uninstall the item named Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0.
  3. Uninstall the item named Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh.
  4. Download the XNA Game Studio cleanup tool and use it to remove XNA Game Studio 4.0 and the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh.
  5. Re-install the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh – you can do this by installing the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 or repairing the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 if you already have that product installed.

If you try the above steps and run into any installation problems, please go to %temp%\XNA Game Studio 4.0 Setup\Logs, zip all of your setup log files, upload the zip file to a file server (such as https://skydrive.live.com), and then post a comment on this blog post that includes a link that I can use to download your log files and take a closer look.