Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

Unadvertise Features

January 27, 2009 Jan 27, 2009 01/27/09
Heath Stewart
The attached Windows Script file allows you to unadvertise features in a Windows Installer product by specifying either a ProductCode or the path to an MSP. If any features are advertised - whether incidental or intentional - the product will be reinstalled and those features added locally to your computer. Usage Only one of /Patch or /...

Dictionary of Windows Installer Tokens

January 16, 2009 Jan 16, 2009 01/16/09
Heath Stewart
If you are writing emails and specifications about Windows Installer all day, chances are your document or mail editor has plenty of squiggly red lines highlighting your presumed spelling errors like MsiPatchSequence. To not miss any actual spelling errors, I find myself double-checking and adding lots of Windows Installer terms to my custom ...

Windows Installer Dictionary

January 15, 2009 Jan 15, 2009 01/15/09
Heath Stewart
Attached is a Unicode-encoded, English locale-sorted text file with many table, column, API, and flag tokens you can use as a spelling dictionary in many applications including Microsoft Word and Outlook email. To support Microsoft Word, Outlook email, and other Microsoft Office products, msi.zip...

Another Possible Workaround for Error 1330

December 11, 2008 Dec 11, 2008 12/11/08
Heath Stewart
When installing Visual Studio 2008, you might run into an error dialog that reads, Error 1330.A file that is required cannot be installed because the cabinet file D:\cab1.cab has an invalid digital signature. This may indicate that the cabinet file is corrupt. The path and name of the cabinet may be different, but might often be D:\cab1....

Windows Installer XML (WiX) v3 Beta Released

December 9, 2008 Dec 9, 2008 12/9/08
Heath Stewart
Since plans were made to ship WiX v3 in the box for Visual Studio 2010, the WiX working group has been working on fixing all outstanding bugs in the WiX v3 code base. Bob Arnson uploaded packages last week as a test on SourceForge and this week the following installation packages were uploaded on the v3 Beta release page. (The ...

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 may complain that another patch is installed even after removing it

November 5, 2008 Nov 5, 2008 11/5/08
Heath Stewart
If Visual Studio 2008 SP1 prompts you to run the Microsoft Visual Studio Patch removal tool, it means that a patch or product is installed that would cause issues when installing VS2008 SP1. The dialog is shown below. (image) If you run the the patch removal tool and are still seeing this dialog, please follow the workaround below. ...

Adding features to Visual Studio 2008 may fail to load setup components

October 6, 2008 Oct 6, 2008 10/6/08
Heath Stewart
When attempting to add features to Visual Studio 2008 after it has already been installed, you may see an error that reports, A problem has been encountered while loading the setup components. Canceling setup.FixUpdated: a hotfix has been uploaded to Code Gallery to address this issue. As stated on the page, Please be aware this Hotfix has not...

Help Improve the .NET Framework Deployment Experience

September 22, 2008 Sep 22, 2008 09/22/08
Heath Stewart
My colleague Peter Marcu, who is leading the development effort on the new deployment experience for the .NET Framework, is seeking information from our developer customers how you deploy the .NET Framework for your applications. If you’re a developer who requires and needs to deploy the .NET Framework to support your applications, ...

Do not repair VS 2008 SP1 from installation media

August 20, 2008 Aug 20, 2008 08/20/08
Heath Stewart
If you need to repair Visual Studio 2008 once SP1 has been applied or wish to change which features are installed, you cannot run setup.exe from the original installation media.When you run repair from media you may see an error like, "A problem has been encountered while loading the setup components. Canceling setup."WorkaroundOpen the ...