I get the promise of developing apps on Windows Phone 8. I do. See this video for an example of how simple it is.
Now try to install Windows Phone 8 SDK on a set of latest hardware you bought from newegg. If you succeeded, then you got further than I did. I literally wrestled hours over this, and I think both hardware and software are to blame.
First off, installing the Windows Phone 8 SDK requires enabling Hyper-V support in Windows 8 Professional. No issues there, right? Big mistake. I first ran the setup to let it handle everything for me.
Reboot? Sure, why not?
Frozen screen a few seconds after login screen appears. No mouse, no nothing. Surely it's just processing a big job, right? Nope, it's good and frozen. No keyboard status indicators. Hard reset time.
After hard reset, BAM, happens again. Ohh boy, I'm locked out of my system. Okay, let's boot into good 'ole safe mode.
[tries for an hour to boot into safe mode by pounding F8, SHIFT+F8, and variants]. Turns out my system doesn't want to boot into safe mode reliably. The only way I could count on Windows 8 booting into safe mode is if I did a hard reset in between the Please Wait... message and the actual login screen.
Alright, so now I'm in safe mode. Long story short, I couldn't do much there, but the same menu gave me access to restore points. Luckily the SDK installer created one for me for such an occasion. Restore point utilized, now I'm back in business.
So searching the internet turned up a suggestion that I upgrade the BIOS on my motherboard. Something about updating the CPU instructions for SLAT-compatible CPUs. (I don't know... I just wanted to write software for a windows phone here!)
Okay, upgraded the BIOS on the motherboard. Reboot.
BAM!!! MY COMPUTER WILL NO LONGER POWER ON SELF TEST!!!!
At this point I'm livid. All I wanted to do was install the SDK to write apps for Windows Phone 8. I've never had this much headache installing *any* software in my life. I finally am able to track down the POST problem (dual channel memory apparently isn't working in the latest BIOS for my motherboard) and flash an older, working version of the BIOS.
But now I'm stuck. I can't install Hyper-V on my computer because it freezes Windows. I can't try updating my BIOS because it freezes everything else. I guess WP8 development will have to wait for now.
This is why people like me get over building their own computers...
