Install Windows Azure SDK on Windows XP

To play with Azure on visual studio 2010, the cloud service project page will give you a button to download Windows Azure Tools For Microsoft Visual Studio.

As my OS is Windows XP, the install program will give me a error page saying "To install this software, you must be running a 32-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 or a 32-bit edition of Windows Vista with Service Pack 1."

A search on this topic took me to here . I followed the steps in this post to be able to install the tools on XP.

1. Create an empty directory somewhere on your file system called Exported.

2. Navigate to the Tools folder under the install directory for the Windows Installer SDK.
In my case, this is under C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\bin

3. Launch MsiDb.exe

4.) In the MsiTable - Select Database for Import/Export dialog, browse to and select the WindowsAzureSDK-x86.msi file.

5.) In the MsiTable - Select Folder containing Text Files dialog, browse to and select the Exported directory you created earlier.

6.) In the MsiTable - Database table import/export window, click the Export radio button.

7.) In the list, select LaunchCondition, and then click OK.

8.) Click the Quit button.

8.) Open "...\Exported\LaunchCondition.idt" in Notepad

9.) Remove the following lines in this file:
(VersionNT = 600 AND ServicePackLevel >= 1) OR (VersionNT > 600) To install this software, you must be running a 32-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 or a 32-bit edition of Windows Vista with Service Pack 1.
IISVERSION AND ASPNET To use this software, you must enable Internet Information Services 7.0 with ASP.NET support. See the product release notes for details.

10.) Save the file.

11.) Navigate to the Tools folder under the install directory for the Windows Installer SDK

12.) Launch MsiDb.exe

13.) In the MsiTable - Select Database for Import/Export dialog, browse to and select the WindowsAzureSDK-x86.msi file.

14.) In the MsiTable - Select Folder containing Text Files dialog, browse to and select the Exported directory you created earlier.

15.) In the MsiTable - Database table import/export window, click the Import radio button.

16.) In the list, select LaunchCondition.idt, and then click OK.

17.) Click the Quit button.

18.) Launch the WindowsAzureSDK-x86.msi file, and enjoy.