Note – I wrote this post whilst I still had Windows 8.1. Now that I have upgraded to Windows 10, things are different – since .NET 4.6 RTM is part of Windows!
Windows 10 readers should note that it is possible to install the Windows XP C++ tools in Visual Studio, which will install the Windows SDK 7.1, but not the VC compilers.
If you still need the older VC compilers, I discovered a workaround to get them on Windows 10! See here.
Still on Windows 8.1 or below? Read on:
I was having trouble installing the VC 12.0 compilers from the Windows SDK v7.1
I needed them to compile Mixxx, a open-source cross-platform DJ software.
Quite unfortunately, I received this error message:
“Some Windows SDK components require the RTM .NET Framework 4. Setup detected a pre-release version of the .NET Framework 4.“
This was due to an installation of Visual Studio 2015 RC (which, by the way, has been pretty great so far).
Anyway, the solution to get past this error is to uninstall KB3033095 from Windows Update – which corresponds to .NET 4.6 RC. You won’t find the package in Add/Remove programs (as I had expected), which had me stumped for a while. I discovered this by downloading a fresh copy of the RC installer, which prompted the removal instructions.
VS 2015 RTM Update:
I still needed to uninstall the .NET 4.6 RTM (KB3045563) and the Visual C++ 2010 x86/x64 Redistributables, otherwise the installer would still fail at some point. However, the difference between the RC is that VS now refuses to launch with .NET 4.6 missing! Here’s a .NET 4.6 RC reinstall link.