Probably many of of you are like me – working on Windows Server (2008 R2) and wondering how to install the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools on server OS. Luckily Aaron Stebner posted a solution on his blog:
There is a way you can work around the Windows Server 2008 setup block if needed. Please note that this is not officially supported, so if you try these steps, you are doing so at your own risk.
- Download the Windows Phone Developer Tools web bootstrapper and save it to your hard drive
- Extract the contents of the setup package by running vm_web.exe /x and choosing a path to extract to
- Go to the folder you extracted to in step 2 and open the file baseline.dat in notepad
- Look for the section named [gencomp7788]
Note - you have to change this exact section - this is the one that controls the OS version blocking behavior in Windows Phone Developer Tools setup. - Change the value InstallOnLHS from 1 to 0
- Change the value InstallOnWin7Server from 1 to 0
- Save and close baseline.dat
- Run setup.exe /web from the folder you extracted to in step 2
Note - please make sure that you include the /web command line parameter in step 8. If you don't, setup will not attempt to download the packages it needs to install, and it will fail to install correctly as a result.
Neat… Thanks Aaron!