Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

Logging Archives - Visual Studio Setup

Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 installing for over 2 hours could be a sign of a problem

March 2, 2011 Mar 2, 2011 03/2/11
Heath Stewart
On average customers are experience ~45 minute installs for Visual Studio 2010 SP1. Based on machine performance, even seeing install times of a little over an hour isn’t unexpected. But if VS2010 SP1 is taking more than a couple hours to install, there could be a problem and in the case described below requires user action.Description ...

A patch may take as long or longer to install than the target product

February 20, 2011 Feb 20, 2011 02/20/11
Heath Stewart
Often I’m asked why installing a Windows Installer patch (MSP) takes as long or longer to install than the target product (MSI). While this isn’t always the case for every patch, it’s certainly possible for a number of reasons. It may also come as a surprise that the size of the patch can have little to do with the time to ...

Installation sequence restrictions for multi-package transactions

July 3, 2009 Jul 3, 2009 07/3/09
Heath Stewart
Windows Installer 4.5 introduced a feature to install multiple packages in a single transaction. Multi-package transactions allow setup developers to install multiple packages as an atomic unit that are installed together, or rolled back completely. You can also apply patches to multiple products or even repair multiple products – any ...

Patch Applicability

April 13, 2009 Apr 13, 2009 04/13/09
Heath Stewart
When installing a patch package, Windows Installer first determines if the patch is applicable. Depending on how the patch is installed, this happens a little differently. Windows Installer can determine the list of applicable products, or it can be told to which products the patch should be applied.Possible productsTo have Windows Installer ...

Changes to Package Caching in Windows Installer 5.0

February 2, 2009 Feb 2, 2009 02/2/09
Heath Stewart
Windows Installer 5.0 is shipping in Windows 7 as part of the operating system. To address the issue where the User Account Control consent dialog is displayed with an “Unidentified Publisher”, the .msi package is cached in its entirety.Prior to Windows Installer 5.0, installation packages, or .msi files, were stripped of their ...

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....

VS 2008 SP1 fails to install because of missing packages from the cache

August 16, 2008 Aug 16, 2008 08/16/08
Heath Stewart
Some customers are reporting that Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is failing to install with the following error in the HTML log you can view from the error dialog. Patch (C:UsersheathsAppDataLocalTEMPWebDesignerCore_KB950278.msp) install failed on product (Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007). Msi Log: Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 ...

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Released

August 11, 2008 Aug 11, 2008 08/11/08
Heath Stewart
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1, Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1, and Team Foundation Server 2008 Service Pack 1 have been released. This is a big release on the heals of SQL Server 2008 which has a dependency on .and includes NET Framework 3.5 SP1.This is a big release with many new features and improvements over previous ...

Enable BITS Logging

July 7, 2008 Jul 7, 2008 07/7/08
Heath Stewart
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 uses a new bootstrap application that chains several packages together for a seamless installation experience. Because VS2008 SP1 contains a lot of fixes and new features, it is also quite large - almost 3 times as large as VS2005 SP1.To download all this data, we use the Background Intelligent ...