Testing my Windows Phone 7.1 OS app on my Windows 7 PC?

Question

Zune does not recognize Windows Phone 8 devices? I can't run my project with the "Windows Phone Device" debug configuration. My OS is Windows 7, so my SDK should be the 7th. I've read that I need Windows SDK 8 so I could run my project in my Windows Phone 8, but for that I need to have Windows 8 in my PC as well. Is there any way to avoid this, and run successfully my 7.1 version app, in my Windows 7 PC, with the 7th SDK installed on my Windows Phone 8 device?

Thank you and sorry for the bad english.

Answer 1

For testing your app on Windows Phone 8 device you need Windows 8 + Windows Phone 8 SDK, or Visual Studio 2013 with this SDK built in.

Or you can upload your app as 'beta app' to Windows Phone Store and test it there, but that's not ideal for debugging, only for the final app testing.