Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

Testing for components that install under TARGETDIR

A while back I explained how Windows Installer sets the TARGETDIR property to the root of the fixed drive with the most free space available. The problem is that even an attached USB external drive can appear as a fixed drive, and these may be later detached. If components are installed to that drive and the drive is detached, repairing, ...

Test your conditions

When testing the serviceability of your product before you ship, it’s important to test any conditions you might have on the product, features, components, and actions.Feature conditions can set the install level of a feature when the package is installed. But as the Condition table documentation states, be sure that the condition does ...

Serviceability

It’s always important to test your product before it ships. Servicing it later can prove very costly and very difficult. It’s no different with your installation packages. You need to test not only basic install and uninstall operations, but also test your servicing plan. Problems are inevitable in practically any application, and ...

Verify ISO before burning or mounting Visual Studio 2010 RC

If you have downloaded the Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate (RC) from MSDN or the Download Center as an ISO and are having problems installing it, it could be that either the ISO wasn’t downloaded correctly or that it wasn’t burnt to DVD correctly.On the installation error dialog, you will find a link to the installation log. ...

Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 RC and Visual Studio 2010 RC Available Now

Announced yesterday for MSDN subscribers, the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidates are available today for everyone to download.Feedback on VS2010 RC has been great, and we hope you agree. Feel free to provide feedback about your installation and development experience. Performance was a major focus for the RC...