Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

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 ...

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 ...

Detection Logic fixed for KB937061 (MS07-052)

Customers have been offered KB937061 for Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 from Microsoft Update when they have already installed it. The Microsoft Security Response Center blog has more information about the problem and what they have done to fix it.I wanted to add that because patches are cached according to their package code, you do not ...

Unchanged Files Break Patch Uninstall

I've discussed a couple different reasons that Windows Installer 3.0-style patches - those with the MsiPatchMetadata table in the patch package itself - might not be uninstallable. I explained another reason in a discussion about the new patch build support in Windows Installer XML (WiX) v3 recently, describing why unchanged files should not ...

How to Safely Delete Orphaned Patches

If Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 fails to install, you might find additional .msp files under %WINDIR%\Installer for each failed attempt. You should not simply delete these patches, however, because if one of the patches was applied successfully to one target product, deleting that patch will cause future maintenance installs – including...

The Patch Cache and Freeing Space

When you install a patch using Windows Installer, the .msp file is cached in the %WINDIR%\Installer directory. This accounts for some of the space required by Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1. A single patch is cached only once regardless to how many products the patch applies. Starting with Windows Installer 3.0, any patches that contain ...

Detecting Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1

Now that Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 is released, it can be detected programmatically in various ways. Registry detection is recommended for ease and is less impacted by future changes to the product installation. Because there are many different Visual Studio 2005 editions and service pack 1 patch packages, you may need to perform ...

Slipstreaming Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1

Now that Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 is released, some are wondering how to slipstream the patch so they can install Visual Studio 2005 with SP1 already applied. Much of this process is standard practice for Windows Installer packages. Please note this will require a lot of disk space, as you’re unpacking around 3 GB – and ...