Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta 2 was released on 6/29/2011. Are you ready for it? If not then let my guide help you get your system prepared and go through a few new features.

Download links:

• Web Installer of Windows Phone 7.1 Beta 2 SDK
• ISO Image of Windows Phone 7.1 Beta 2 SDK - (723 MB)

To get started you are going to need to remove the previous version of your Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta 1.

This kicks off the process of uninstalling the Beta.

Once it is uninstalled then you are going to want to grab the bits from: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26648. The only thing your interested in here is the vm_web2.exe.

Make sure before you start that Zune is not running or you will get this error message like this one and have to restart from scratch.

Now just go through your normal Install Screens.

It should be installed and ready to go:

A couple of things to note:

1) When creating a new phone application you now have several new templates to choose from as shown below. I welcome this addition because I’m a firm believer that we need more templates in order to get more people started.

2) Once you select an application template you can now pick which version of the Windows Phone platform that you wish to target:

3) If you created a WP7 7.1 Beta 1 project that it will still work properly in WP7 7.1 Beta 2.

4) You now have access to the search app icon.

Once pressed then you will see something like this:

5) Under Settings –> Applications. You now have background tasks.

6) You will notice that the Web Browser looks a little different with the URL now located at the bottom of the screen and completely removing the “add”, “favorites” and “tabs” icon.

Those icons are now moved to the menu bar.

That is it for my “Getting up and going with the Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta 2”. I hope you enjoyed it and please feel free to subscribe to my feed or follow me on Twitter.

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