Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

VS2012 Archives - Visual Studio Setup

vswhere now searches older versions of Visual Studio

March 11, 2017 Mar 11, 2017 03/11/17
Heath Stewart
One of the top requests I kept hearing for vswhere was to also search older versions of Visual Studio. You can now do that starting with the latest release. Even if you don't have Visual Studio 2017 or newer installed - which means the query API is not even registered - you can use vswhere to find the installation root directory for Visual ...

Workaround for when Visual Studio Update says it doesn’t apply

September 12, 2014 Sep 12, 2014 09/12/14
Heath Stewart
I previously blogged about a problem some customers were running into that prevented Visual Studio Update from installing. You might see a dialog like the one to the right and an error message that read something like, Update 2 does not apply, or is blocked by another condition on your computer. At least for many people, they had an ...

How to relocate the Package Cache

February 11, 2014 Feb 11, 2014 02/11/14
Heath Stewart
Visual Studio can require a lot of space on the system drive. Based on years of data collected from customers’ installations from the Customer Experience Improvement Program, we took advantage of this feature in Burn – the Windows Installer XML (WiX) chainer – to eliminate most errors during repair, servicing, and even uninstall. This ...

Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 has Released

November 27, 2012 Nov 27, 2012 11/27/12
Heath Stewart
To provide incremental value to our customers, we have released Visual Studio Update 1 and will be notifying all Visual Studio 2012 customers via toast notifications (like you get for VS package updates) soon.Soma’s blog has more information on VSUpdate in general, as well as some of the features you can expect. And check out Brian&rsquo...

Visual Studio 2012 RTM will not install on pre-release versions of Windows 8

August 23, 2012 Aug 23, 2012 08/23/12
Heath Stewart
SymptomCustomers installing Visual Studio 2012 RTM on pre-release versions of Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 may see the following error after launching the setup application: The .Net Framework installed on this machine does not meet the minimum required version: 4.5.50709. This is a blocking error and only allows the install to be canceled...

Visual Studio 2012 can only install to certified Windows To Go drives

August 22, 2012 Aug 22, 2012 08/22/12
Heath Stewart
Windows To Go is a cool new enterprise features to enable a mobile workforce to carry around an enterprise-managed installation of Windows on a USB thumb drive. However, only certified thumb drives appear as fixed drives and, therefore, Visual Studio 2012 can only install to certified drives. VS2012, like some other products, only supports ...

A certificate chain could not be built to a trusted root authority

August 17, 2012 Aug 17, 2012 08/17/12
Heath Stewart
This was a preview of a Knowledge Base article which has been published as KB2746268.SymptomAfter Visual Studio 2012 has been installed, the finish page displays the following: Setup Completed However, not all features installed correctly. Please correct the following problems to ensure full product functionality. Click here to see the most ...

Upgrading from Visual Studio 2012 RC to RTM

August 17, 2012 Aug 17, 2012 08/17/12
Heath Stewart
Now that Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 have been released, some customers are wondering if they need to uninstall the Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate (RC) first before upgraded. In general, the answer is “no”. VS2012 RC will upgrade to RTM, but there are a few things to note: For more information about ...

Detection keys for Visual Studio 2012

August 3, 2012 Aug 3, 2012 08/3/12
Heath Stewart
Administrators and developers who need to detect if Visual Studio 2012 is installed on a machine can use similar keys as those used for past releases like Visual Studio 2010. In general, these detection keys are always found in the 32-bit registry hive with a pattern like: So if you needed to detect if VS2012 Ultimate is installed, you ...