Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

2012 - Visual Studio Setup

Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 has Released

November 27, 2012 Nov 27, 2012 11/27/12
Heath Stewart
To provide incremental value to our customers, we have released Visual Studio Update 1 and will be notifying all Visual Studio 2012 customers via toast notifications (like you get for VS package updates) soon.Soma’s blog has more information on VSUpdate in general, as well as some of the features you can expect. And check out Brian&rsquo...

Windows Installer XML (WiX) v3.6 Released

September 6, 2012 Sep 6, 2012 09/6/12
Heath Stewart
The Windows Installer XML (WiX) team has released version 3.6 which, most notably, released a powerful and customizable chainer named Burn. The Visual Studio 2012 setup applications were built on Burn using features such as package caching, reference counting, and sticky patching to improve the overall experience from past releases.Head on ...

Visual Studio 2012 RTM will not install on pre-release versions of Windows 8

August 23, 2012 Aug 23, 2012 08/23/12
Heath Stewart
SymptomCustomers installing Visual Studio 2012 RTM on pre-release versions of Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 may see the following error after launching the setup application: The .Net Framework installed on this machine does not meet the minimum required version: 4.5.50709. This is a blocking error and only allows the install to be canceled...

Visual Studio 2012 can only install to certified Windows To Go drives

August 22, 2012 Aug 22, 2012 08/22/12
Heath Stewart
Windows To Go is a cool new enterprise features to enable a mobile workforce to carry around an enterprise-managed installation of Windows on a USB thumb drive. However, only certified thumb drives appear as fixed drives and, therefore, Visual Studio 2012 can only install to certified drives. VS2012, like some other products, only supports ...

Upgrading from Visual Studio 2012 RC to RTM

August 17, 2012 Aug 17, 2012 08/17/12
Heath Stewart
Now that Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 have been released, some customers are wondering if they need to uninstall the Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate (RC) first before upgraded. In general, the answer is “no”. VS2012 RC will upgrade to RTM, but there are a few things to note: For more information about ...

Detection keys for Visual Studio 2012

August 3, 2012 Aug 3, 2012 08/3/12
Heath Stewart
Administrators and developers who need to detect if Visual Studio 2012 is installed on a machine can use similar keys as those used for past releases like Visual Studio 2010. In general, these detection keys are always found in the 32-bit registry hive with a pattern like: So if you needed to detect if VS2012 Ultimate is installed, you ...

How Visual Studio 2012 Avoids Prompts for Source

July 26, 2012 Jul 26, 2012 07/26/12
Heath Stewart
Requiring source packages during installation, repairs, and even uninstall are common occurrences for some customers. The core issue is that Windows Installer needs the source location of the package and its files to install - and can't find them automatically - when attempting to restore the machine to the state it should be in (according to ...

Easier Authoring for Slipstreaming Patches

July 26, 2012 Jul 26, 2012 07/26/12
Heath Stewart
Slipstreaming Windows Installer patches is, technically, installing the MSP simultaneously with the MSI as a single transaction. This is, effectively: The applicable transforms (both the authoring changes and patch transforms) are applied to the MSI and the MSI is installed with those changes from the start. Both the MSI and MSP are cached ...