XNA beta is not the same as XNA final

Doh! I was trying to run two very interesting samples found at the XNA Creators Club and was having problems. The build was, for some reason, not building the Content, and this was straight out of the .ZIP. Strange. So I posted on the Creators Club forum, and Shawn came to the rescue, as well as a couple of other people, including Neil Pryde and Machaira (otherwise known as Jim Perry).

Turns out no one had heard of such a problem. Shawn posted a very helpful, step-by-step troubleshooting that lead to some textual output from Visual C# Express, which he was going to look through, but as I sat at the Appleton Airport and worried about the weather, lightning struck: I was still using XNA 2.0 Beta. Could it be? So I paid $7 for a day's access to their WiFi (when will we have free WiFi like we have free drinking water?), downloaded the final release, uninstalled beta, installed final, restart, F5, and....VOILA! It worked!

I feel embarrassed I didn't think of this before. So if you are out there, having the same problem, that's the solution. I am still not clear what the culprit was inside the beta, but I have decided to move on and continue learning XNA.