14 DAY TRIAL // At the end of October 2008, Microsoft made available for download a Community Technology Preview of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0. The CTP, released as a virtual hard disk image designed to integrate with Virtual PC 2007 SP1, is set to expire at the start of 2009. However, testers have the possibility to prolong the CTP's life beyond the expiration period with Microsoft's blessing, in order to keep on running the pre-release build of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0, until the next updates will be offered.
Making the CTP live past its initial expiration date “involves turning off the synchronization between the host OS and the VPC. This enables you to set the time in the VPC to a 2008 date while you live in 2009.”
“As you might imagine, Team Foundation Server doesn’t like it much when time goes backwards, so you’ll want to make sure that you don’t use the VPC and then set the clock backwards after that point. Ideally, you can use a fresh VPC and disable your clock prior to launching it for the first time,” Jeff Beehler, VS Team System chief of staff, revealed.
As it is the case with all pre-release Microsoft software, the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP is time-bombed, allowing users to test the solutions only until expiration. Beehler failed to indicate when the Redmond company planned to deliver an additional taste of the next versions of Visual Studio and .NET Framework, but stated that, unfortunately, it “will be a while” before an update would be produced.
In this context, severing the synchronization between the host operating system and Virtual PC is just the trick to make the CTP go back in time. Ben Armstrong, a program manager on the core virtualization team at Microsoft, details the necessary steps available for disabling time synchronization under Virtual PC 2007.
“After January 1, 2009, you will no longer be able to launch the Visual Studio 2010 CTP. This is due to a hard-coded expiration date in this CTP. CTP's are pre-release software, so they aren't designed to run forever,” Brian Keller, a technical evangelist for Microsoft Visual Studio Team System, said. “Note that you should not roll back your system clock to a date prior to your last interaction with Team Foundation Server, because otherwise Team Foundation Server will get confused. If possible, I would suggest rolling back to a clean copy of the VPC (uncompress the original) and immediately disabling your clock prior to launching it for the first time.”
Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP is available for download here.