• Windows XP requires Service Pack 2 or later.
• Although XNA Game Studio itself is available only in English, on Windows Vista, it is supported under any of the available language settings. On Windows XP, XNA Game Studio may fail to install under some language settings.
• Administrator permissions are not required to run XNA Game Studio. However, Administrator permissions (administrative elevation on Windows Vista) are required to install XNA Game Studio.
• Although the setup program for XNA Game Studio will complete on the Windows 2003 Server operating system, XNA Game Studio is not officially supported on Windows 2003 Server, and the XNA Game Studio software may not work as expected.

To run XNA Framework games on Windows, you will need a graphics card that supports Shader Model 1.1 or greater and DirectX 9.0c. We recommend that you use a graphics card that supports Shader Model 2.0 because some samples and starter kits may require it.

You should ensure that your graphics card is using the most recent drivers by checking with your hardware vendor and by accessing Microsoft Update.

To develop XNA Framework games for Xbox 360, you will need to have a hard drive connected to your Xbox 360 console.

Other hardware requirements for XNA Game Studio are identical to those for Visual Studio 2005. For more information, see the Visual Studio documentation.

XNA Game Studio requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. The Setup program for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 installs the .NET Framework if it is not already installed on your computer. You can also install the .NET Framework from the Microsoft .NET Framework Developer Center.

XNA Game Studio Setup installs the DirectX runtime, which is required to use the XNA Framework game API.

XNA Game Studio Setup installs the Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT) from the August 2007 DirectX Software Development Kit (SDK). XACT enables you to author audio content for your game. XNA Game Studio Setup installs a version of XACT that is compatible with the XNA Game Studio product. XNA Game Studio may not work with content authored using other versions of XACT.

You must have administrator privileges to run XACT.

XACT Requires .NET Framework 1.1. If .NET Framework 1.1 is not installed, XACT launches, but using the tool causes XACT to generate the message, "Object reference not set to an instance of an object."

Not all installations of Windows Vista or Windows XP SP2 have .NET Framework 1.1 installed. Also, it is possible to have .NET Framework 2.0 installed, but not .NET Framework 1.1. To determine if you have .NET Framework 1.1, click Start on your Windows desktop, click Control Panel, and double-click the Add or Remove Programs icon. If .NET Framework 1.1 is installed, it will be shown in the displayed list of applications.

You can install .NET Framework 1.1 from the following location.

• .NET Framework 1.1

You should run Visual C# 2005 Express Edition at least once before installing XNA Game Studio. Otherwise, features of XNA Game Studio may be missing from the user interface. For example, the XNA Game Studio Express Xbox 360 item in the Tools | Options dialog box may be missing. If you encounter this issue, we recommend that you do the following:

1. Uninstall XNA Game Studio Express.
2. Run Visual C# 2005 Express Edition.
3. Exit Visual C# 2005 Express Edition.
4. Reinstall XNA Game Studio Express.

You must register Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition before installing XNA Game StudioTo register Visual C# 2005 Express Edition, click Register Product on the Help menu.

Before installing XNA Game Studio, close any running instances of Visual C# 2005 Express Edition or other supported Visual Studio 2005 products, such as Visual Studio 2005 Pro.

Install XNA Game Studio using Explorer on Windows Vista. Do not attempt to install XNA Game Studio from a command prompt or from an administrator command prompt.

You must uninstall any previous pre-release of XNA Game Studio 2.0 before installing XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta).

On Windows XP, XNA Game Studio does not install under some language settings, for example, Polish. This issue does not occur on Windows Vista.

In order to run XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta) with Windows Vista Enterprise 64-Bit Edition, you must install the Visual Studio SP1 Update for Windows Vista. Otherwise, Visual Studio 2005 crashes when you exit the application.

If you choose to uninstall Visual Studio 2005, you must first uninstall XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta). XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta) will not uninstall properly if Visual Studio 2005 is not currently installed.

Uninstalling XNA Game Studio 2.0 does not uninstall the XNA Framework. You must uninstall the XNA Framework separately using Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel.

After you install XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta), a copy of the DirectX redistributable files will exist in

These are temporary files used by Setup and are not supported for direct use by developers. Uninstalling XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta) will uninstall these temporary files.

In XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta), the default configuration for a solution containing both a Windows and Xbox 360 game is set to Mixed Platforms. In some cases, this setting will result in the content for your game being built incorrectly. To work around this issue, specify the solution configuration of the platform you are currently targeting. For example, if you want to build, run, or debug the Windows project, select x86 from the Solution Platforms drop-down combo box. If you are targeting the Xbox 360 platform, you would instead select Xbox 360. This issue will be corrected in the final release of XNA Game Studio.

In order to access Help content for XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta), you must configure the Visual Studio Help viewer to load locally installed help content. The Help content for XNA Game Studio 2.0 will be available online for the final release, but for prerelease versions, such as XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta), only locally installed help content is available. To configure the Visual Studio Help viewer to use locally installed Help content, do the following:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options. The Options dialog box appears.

2. In the tree view control in the left pane of the Options dialog box, click the Help node beneath the Environment node.

   You may need to click the Show all settings check box to make the Help node visible.

3. Click the Online node beneath the Help node.

   You may need to click the plus sign next to the Help node to make the Online node visible.

4. In the set of options labeled When loading Help content, select Try local first, then online.
5. Click OK.

When adding a reference to an XNA Framework assembly, such as System.Xml.dll, always set the Copy Local property to False. This is necessary in order to work around an issue in which invalid assemblies are deployed to the Xbox 360 console, resulting in your game crashing or failing to start. This issue does not occur for Windows games. This issue will be corrected in the final release of XNA Game Studio 2.0.

Do not disable the Always show solution option in the Projects and Solutions node of the Tools | Options dialog box. Disabling this option may prevent multiple XNA Game Studio projects that are part of a single solution from being visible in Solution Explorer.

The XNA Title Player for the XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta) does not support Xbox 360 games that were developed with XNA Game Studio Express or XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 Refresh.

You may receive the following message when connecting from your computer to the Xbox 360 console.

An error has occurred while connecting to your computer. Please restart XNA Game Launcher and try again.

The issue that causes this message is rare and occurs only under unusual circumstances. If you receive this message repeatedly, please let us know.

The Microsoft Firewall Client for ISA Server interferes with connectivity to PartnerNet and Xbox LIVE. If the Firewall Client is enabled on your computer, other computers will not be able to join multiplayer sessions that you create on your computer. Also, your computer will not be able to join sessions created on other computers. To work around this issue, disable the Firewall Client. This issue does not occur when using system link because system link does not require connectivity to PartnerNet or Xbox LIVE.

You may encounter issues when trying to join a multiplayer session on a computer that is running IPsec. IPsec discards incoming network packets from unknown network endpoints, such as Xbox 360 consoles. When a computer sends an outgoing packet, it opens a connection to the remote network endpoint. This connection will remain open for five minutes. During this time, the computer that opened the connection will accept incoming network packets. After this time, any incoming packets will be discarded. When you deploy a game from a Windows computer to an Xbox 360 console, XNA Game Studio opens a connection to the console. However, If you wait five minutes, this connection will expire and the game instance on the console will not be able to join a session on the Windows computer.

This issue can also arise if you launch the game on the console from the Xbox 360 Title Player rather than deploying the game from the Windows computer because, in this scenario, the Windows computer has not opened the connection. A third scenario in which this issue can occur is when a game on an Xbox 360 console attempts to join a session on a Windows computer other than the computer that deployed the game to the console.

To work around this issue, manually open a connection to the Xbox 360 console by browsing the console from the Windows computer using the Xbox 360 Neighborhood tool installed with the XDK.

Multiplayer games running on Windows XP 64-Bit Edition may not be able to sign-in to the Xbox LIVE/PartnerNet service. This issue will be corrected in the final release of XNA Game Studio 2.0.

If you are running an XNA Framework Game on the Microsoft Windows operating system on a dual-core AMD processor, and the game contacts the Xbox LIVE servers, you may experience unpredictable behavior such as the game process hanging. To workaround this issue, the AMD Dural-Core Optimizer from AMD should be installed on the computer on which the game is running. The Optimizer is currently available at the following location.

For Windows XP SP2, the XnaPack tool extracts games to the following location on your local hard drive.

For Windows Vista, the XnaPack tool extracts games to the following location.

The value of the %USERPROFILE% environment variable changes depending on the login ID of the currently logged-in user. It also depends on the drive letter of the partition on which Windows was installed and whether you are running Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista. For example, for Windows XP SP2 installed on drive C:, XnaPack would extract packaged games to the following location.

where "<user>" represents the login ID of the currently logged-in user. For Windows Vista installed on drive D:, XnaPack would extract packaged games to the following location.

where, again, "<user>" represents the login ID of the currently logged-in user.

You may want to create a Windows shortcut to this location so that you can access it more easily.

If an XNA Framework game throws NoSuitableGraphicsDeviceException, inspect the text in the unhandled exception dialog box to determine whether the cause is an unsupported video card.

To run XNA Framework games on Windows, you will need a graphics card that supports Shader Model 1.1 or greater and DirectX 9.0c. We recommend that you use a graphics card that supports Shader Model 2.0 because some samples and starter kits may require it.

You should ensure that your graphics card is using the most recent drivers by checking with your hardware vendor and by accessing Microsoft Update.

You must set the build action to Compile for items in content projects in order for the content project to build correctly. Do not set the build action to Content.

The Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT) requires .NET Framework 1.1 to be installed. Not all Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista computers have .NET Framework 1.1 installed.

To check whether you already have .NET Framework 1.1 installed, in Control Panel, open Add or Remove Programs. Then, in the list that appears, scroll through the list of applications. If you see Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 listed, the latest version is already installed and you do not need to install it again.

You can install .NET Framework 1.1 from the following location.

• .NET Framework 1.1

Additionally, on Windows Vista, XACT must be run with administrator privileges. You can do this by browsing to the XNA Game Studio folder, then Tools, and then right-clicking Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool and selecting Run as administrator.

The setup program for XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta) installs the June 2007 version of the Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT). You must use this version of XACT when developing with XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta).

When using the Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT) with XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta), you are limited to importing no more than 200 wave banks.

Creating a new instance of the Spacewar Windows Starter Kit (2.0) may take a significant amount of time, depending on the speed of your computer.

To run XNA Framework games on Windows, you will need a graphics card that supports Shader Model 1.1 or greater and DirectX 9.0c. We recommend that you use a graphics card that supports Shader Model 2.0 because some samples and starter kits may require it.

You should ensure that your graphics card is using the most recent drivers by checking with your hardware vendor and by accessing Microsoft Update.

The Spacewar Windows Starter Kit (2.0) now includes full keyboard support for both players. To play Spacewar in single-player mode, press the HOME key.