Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

Vista Archives - Visual Studio Setup

Restart Manager functionality in WiX 3.5

September 16, 2010 Sep 16, 2010 09/16/10
Heath Stewart
WiX 3.5 provides features to integrate with Visual Studio 2005, 2008, and 2010. But like many add-ins, since new files are being added they certainly can’t be in use by devenv.exe. So when we call devenv.exe /setup as part of our install, the changes may not show up in running instances of Visual Studio. To provide a better experience – ...

Customizing Shortcuts for Visual Studio

August 21, 2010 Aug 21, 2010 08/21/10
Heath Stewart
After installing the last several releases of Visual Studio, you’ll find shortcuts to command prompts that automatically set up the PATH, INCLUDE, LIB, and other environment variables. At least with Visual Studio 2010 these command prompts have larger buffers and enable quick edit mode, but some people like to customize these shortcuts ...

Booting Windows to a Differencing Virtual Hard Disk

October 13, 2009 Oct 13, 2009 10/13/09
Heath Stewart
Testing software can be fun and rewarding. You get to see new, upcoming features and provide valuable feedback to the developer. But as with most pre-release software, we recommend that you don’t install it on production machines. You could dedicate extra machines for testing, or even test in a virtual machine. Virtual machines are great for...

AppCompat in Windows Installer

November 6, 2007 Nov 6, 2007 11/6/07
Heath Stewart
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 ...

Upload Installation Logs on Vista Today

August 28, 2007 Aug 28, 2007 08/28/07
Heath Stewart
Bret Grinslade, Group Program Manager for our Deployment Technology Group, describes how you can send feedback directly to our team. You can also check a box during setup to have feedback in the form of installation logs sent directly to our system. As Bret notes, however, on Vista uploading logs can take up to 30 days before you're prompted ...

Immediate Custom Actions Always Impersonate

July 12, 2007 Jul 12, 2007 07/12/07
Heath Stewart
Windows Installer is a client/server application. When you install a package using msiexec.exe - which is executed by default in response to shell verbs such as Install - or APIs like MsiInstallProduct the package is initially processed under the user's credentials. This means, of course, that in over-the-shoulder elevation when administrative...

Windows Installer Errors 2738 and 2739 with Script Custom Actions

May 31, 2007 May 31, 2007 05/31/07
Heath Stewart
Windows Script custom actions should be avoided. They are difficult to debug, get blocked by virus scanners, and are far more susceptible to machine state than native custom actions. That is indicated by Windows Installer error messages 2738 and 2739, which read: 2738, Could not access VBScript run time for custom action [2]. 2739, Could not ...

VS 2005 SP1 Update for Vista Requires VS 2005 SP1

March 22, 2007 Mar 22, 2007 03/22/07
Heath Stewart
If you're attempting to install the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista without having installed Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 first on all applicable products, you will receive Windows error 1642, which reads, The installer cannot install the upgrade patch because the program being upgraded may be missing or the ...

Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista Available

March 7, 2007 Mar 7, 2007 03/7/07
Heath Stewart
As Aaron notes, the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista is available on the download center. This patch is available for all supported languages of Visual Studio 2005, unlike the beta which was available in English and Japanese. You should first uninstall the beta update for Vista. Note that you do not have to right-...