As submitted to http://acanac.org/blogs/geek/

I’ve been running Visual Studio 2008 since the first beta release.  The first time I tested it, I installed it on a virtual machine running Windows XP.  Things went well and the install was a success.  I played around with the beta and wasn’t overly impressed.  It looked and felt much the same as Visual Studio 2005.  I didn’t worry too much about it, it was a beta.

At some point I installed the beta version on my work laptop.  It was also running Windows XP, but it wasn’t clean.  What I mean is that it wasn’t a new installation of Windows.  It was full of corporate software and other betas and trials.  Not the ideal situation, but I had no issues.  I used it to develop “proof of concept” solutions for the organization.  I don’t recall having any complications, not with beta 1 anyways.  I also should note that I was running it side by side with Visual Studio 2005

When I received the notification that the second version of the beta was available, I started to get excited.  The community was getting closer to the final release.  I downloaded it and prepared for the upgrade.  I’m not normally one to do proper installs, so I decided to do an in place upgrade.  The installation fired up and I started to run through the wizard.  I picked default installation and the wizard displayed the list of things it was going to do.  The first one on the list was the .Net Framework 3.5 beta.  After several minutes, the installation told me that it had failed and that no components were installed at all.  I was very displeased.

I tried again a couple of times with continued failures.  The typical answer to such a problem is a good old fashioned reboot.  I can assure you that this didn’t solve the problem.  I then looked at the component itself.  I figured if I could get the .Net Framework 3.5 installed on it’s own, then VS2008 would install no problem.  I downloaded the installation from the Microsoft website and gave it a go.  No good.  It failed miserably.  Next I tried to clean up the laptop.  I uninstalled VS2005 and all of it’s components.  I uninstalled all of the .Net Frameworks and any remnants of VS2008.  Surely, this should have worked, but it didn’t.

I was at a complete loss and gave up for the time being.  When VS2008 was officially release back in November, and it was not longer in beta, I decided to give it another go.  Same problems.  I was quite angry to say the least and pretty much gave up on Microsoft.  My luck changed a couple of days ago.  One of my staff was asking about VS2008 and attempted to install it.  He had the exact same problem.  This time, I was determined to find the answer. 

And I did.  After a few hours of reading, I finally found something useful.  Someone identified that stopping IIS would solve the problem.  I tried that and it didn’t work, but it did get me thinking.  I went into the Windows component manager and told it to remove IIS from my laptop.  Once it was done, I gave the installation another try.  It was completely successful.  I am still in shock.  I don’t know exactly what caused the problem, but I certainly did get around it.  After the install finished, I re-added the IIS component and I was back in business.  I hope this saves another poor soul some time and frustration.