Installing RSAT on Windows 7 SP1

Today we began the process of migrating away from VMWare to Microsoft Hyper-V for our server farms. Something I'm sure that Microsoft would be pretty happy to hear. And yet I got burned by an issue in the process that irks me.

I keep my OS pretty current, and installed Windows 7 SP1 as soon as it was pushed out in Windows Update. Today we go to install Microsoft's Remote Server Administration tools so that I can connect to Hyper-V to build and manage my Virtual Machines, and it won't install. What the hell? I get a nice little error message telling me "This update is not applicable to your computer." Like hell it's not!

After some searching, I found out that someone has come up with a route around this issue to get it to work correctly, which you can find here.

Microsoft has acknowledged it as an issue. In their KB's wording: "Microsoft has confirmed this to be by design, as RSAT was designed for Windows 7 RTM version. A newer version of RSAT is slated to be released in the future." Their advice is to uninstall SP1, install RSAT, then reinstall SP1 again. To me that sounds more dangerous than the route I went to fix it.

Personally, I don't think this is good enough. If this is truly "by design", then someone needs a smack upside the head. Microsoft wants people to keep their software current, and these are the exact people getting smacked!

I get that software is tough to deploy, but if the route I went is all that's needed to fix it, surely someone could roll up a quick hotfix to release in a few hours.

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4 thoughts on “Installing RSAT on Windows 7 SP1

  1. Hey Ken,
    Just to proove that I do occasionally read your stuff...
    The links above both point to the same link. (The MS Article stating it was by design. You may wan to fix the link to the "fix".
    Cheers,
    Jordie

  2. I installed windows 7 from a disc with SP1 slip streamed in. Therefore my starting point included SP1 and I can not uninstall SP1. I would need to fully reformat (with a non SP1 disc), install RSAT, and then install SP1.

    I hope your fix link works for me.

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