This CTP was released December 21st, so I have been updating my existing book chapters to make sure things still “work” if you know what I mean. Here's the instructions to build a machine or VPC for this latest release.

1. Operating System: XP Professional with SP2 or Windows 2003 Server
2. SQL Server: Install SQL Server 2000 or 2005, but you can skip this step if you want to use SQL Express which is installed with Visual Studio 2005 if you elect to.
3. Visual Studio 2005: include SQL Express if you didn't do step 2. NOTE: I like to keep a VPC handy up to this point, and make copies of it as I need to rebuild for future WinFX CTP releases.
4. WinFX Runtime Components (Dec CTP): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BD3BA2D5-6ADB-4FB2-A3AA-E16A9EA5603F&displaylang=en
5. Windows SDK (Dec CTP): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2297BDC9-B5AE-4B8A-B601-EEF54A52867A&displaylang=en
6. Visual Studio Extensions for WinFX (Dec CTP): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=D1336F3E-E677-426B-925C-C84A54654414&displaylang=en

A few things you might want to know after completing this installation:

• The installation directory for the SDK has changed since earlier CTP: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v1.0\
• To get at the samples for W*F you must unzip the rather large AllSamples zip file located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v1.0\samples (NOTE: this can take 1 hour on VPC...and I have a pretty fast machine with lots of RAM!)

I'll be posting links to my WCF book code updated for Dec CTP this week...with a really cool new site update, stay tuned!