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Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 and Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4 Issue

Microsoft has identified an issue for users of the stand-alone Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4 (Windows SDK 7.1). If you have installed Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 on a system with Windows SDK 7.1, an update to the Windows SDK 7.1 is now available from the Microsoft Download Center.  Please follow this link to download and install the update.

Issue

If you have downloaded and installed the stand-alone "Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4" and you are using the x64 or IA64 compilers that were included in that download, you may find that these compilers and the associated Visual C++ library files removed. The impact may be as indicated below:

  • If Visual Studio 2010 Professional is installed, then the IA64 compiler and Visual C++ libraries are removed.
  • If Visual Studio 2010 Express (any edition) is installed, then the x64 and IA64 compilers and Visual C++ libraries are removed.
  • Visual Studio 2010 Premium and Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate are unaffected.

Error Message

If you have installed Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 and experience this issue you may receive either of the following errors when using the Windows SDK v7.1 compilers to target the x64 or IA64 architecture:

"The X64 compilers are not currently installed. Please go to Add/Remove Programs to update your installation."

OR

"The IA64 compilers are not currently installed. Please go to Add/Remove Programs to update your installation."

How to remove Visual Studio 2010 and repair the Windows SDK

The update described above will fix this issue. However, if you want to use the compilers that are installed with Windows SDK 7.1, you will need to remove Visual Studio 2010 SP1 from your machine. The following information describes how to remove Visual Studio 2010 SP1 from your machine and restore the Windows SDK compilers.

If you remove Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 from your system, you will also need to repair the Windows SDK installation as detailed below:   

  1. Uninstall Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1
  2. Run the following from the command line to ensure that all related files have been removed from the system.  Note:  if you receive the error “This action is only valid for products that are currently installed."  you can safely ignore the error, because the files have already been removed.
    1. On all systems, run the following from the command line:
         msiexec /x {2F8B731A-5F2D-3EA8-8B25-C3E5E43F4BDB}
    2. If on an x64 system, run this additional command from the command line:
         msiexec /x {81455DEB-FC7E-3EE5-85CA-2EBDD9FD61EB}
    3. If on an IA64 system, run this additional command from the command line:
         msiexec /x {AC917391-EEBA-3240-81FF-1E9EC0D49403}
  3. Repair Windows SDK v7.1