Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

How to Workaround Error 1330 During Visual Studio 2008 Installation

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:msdncab2.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:msdncab2....

Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1, and How to Detect It

No doubt you've heard the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 was released. Aaron Stebner has posted a list of links to 3.5, as well as 2.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and 3.0 SP1. It's important to note that if you install 3.5 you're actually getting 2.0 SP1 and 3.0 SP1 both.The .NET Framework 3.5 consists of the following: While 2.0 SP1 and 3.0 SP1 are ...

How to Install TFC without PPE

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, now available for MSDN subscribers and Express editions freely available to everyone, is a huge application. It takes a while to install and, in the case of Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1, a long time to patch. Installing or patching multiple copies of shared components can be time-consuming. So if you've ...

AppCompat in Windows Installer

The Application Compatibility (AppCompat) platform in Windows is a powerful feature that allows for fixes on practically any program or package to be loaded on Windows. Windows Installer takes advantage of a protected database full of fixes in the form of transforms and custom action shims.While looking in a verbose Windows Installer log, you ...

Sequencing before Versioning

File versions in Windows Installer and properties like REINSTALL and REINSTALLMODE determine what files are copied to their destination. But before files versions are even a factor, any patches being installed or already installed are sequenced first.A Windows Installer patch file, a .msp file, contains a set of transforms for one or more ...

Windows Installer Properties and Conditions

In many languages, some variables can take a value of different types but with the same meaning. Variants in script, for example, can take 0 or false; or they can take any non-zero value and true. The following JScript example prints "Same".The same is not true of Windows Installer however, and conditions must acknowledge this. Setting a ...

ResolveSource Requires Source

It might be tempting to schedule the ResolveSource action, but ResolveSource actually requires that the original installation source is available whenever it is called. If your installer package is authored correctly, source must only be resolve in cases where the original RTM files are missing or during some patch uninstall scenarios. To ...

EXE Custom Actions are Bad

Windows Installer custom actions that launch executables (base custom action type msidbCustomActionTypeExe, 0x2) are typically bad and should be avoided. How are they bad? Let the Windows Installer team count the ways.During internal audits we question any EXE custom actions (CAs) but inevitably some make it into the product. Typically these ...

Progress for New Patches

You asked. We answered. One source of problems for Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 was that VS 2005 SP1 targeted multiple products, and if you had multiple target products installed - most commonly Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 that uses our IDE - multiple instances of dialogs would spawn. Some people thought SP1 was installing ...