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A Setup Dialog you don't want to see


:P
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Here's what greeted me today after attempting to install Orcas Beta 1 on my machine:

 

<sigh>

I was expecting this to happen. Most likely the issue here is that I had the preview release installed on this box as well and there are likely some left over items that are causing the setup to fail. I was careful to read the install instructions and remove the previous install in the recommended order (although I didn't have half of the components on the list installed) and all of the related components, but even after double checking, rebooting and retrying I still get the same result here.

Actually as soon as the setup gets going I get a MessageBox dialog popping up almost immediately after the install starts:

The installer then goes on processing for about 10 minutes before the above dialog pops up. Incidentally the error report says that it failed due to the invalid parameter.... uh, it would have been nice to fail right there instead of making me wait for 10 minutes.

I guess it's back to beta hell where one install of a preview is all you get before you can throw away your OS install. Fun, fun, fun...

FWIW I've been working with the Orcas preview for a few weeks mainly for checking into LINQ support and playing around with the ASP.NET editor and while there were a lot of major problems with functionality (like missing project properties) overall using of Orcas was a much more pleasant experience than any of the VS 2005 previews or early betas.

I guess I'll be back to VPCs for a while - hate that...

Posted in Visual Studio  Visual Studio  

The Voices of Reason


 

Roger Jakobsson
April 24, 2007

# re: A Setup Dialog you don't want to see


Peter Bromberg
April 24, 2007

# re: A Setup Dialog you don't want to see

Rick,
Try downloading Daemon Tools and mount the iso file as a virtual DVD, and install from there.

Aaron
April 24, 2007

# re: A Setup Dialog you don't want to see

VPC its the only sane way.

Rick Strahl
April 24, 2007

# re: A Setup Dialog you don't want to see

Peter, I'm installing directly from disk - I used the XP ISO mapper then copied everything to HD and then installed from there. There shouldn't be any problem with the actual data at this point.

Using VPC is painful both from an installation and performance POV. Reality is that if I install stuff like this on VPC it just won't get used where if I have it installed full I will to quickly jump in and try something out when I see it or think of something. VPC is always a big production starting up waiting for memory to shift around and even with plenty of memory and separate drives VPC is way, way slow. Very unsatisfying experience <s>...

I took a chance with installing Orcas full mainly because my Vista install is hosed anyway and I need to reinstall in the near future anyway. Although it would be nice to limp along a while longer <s>....

David M. Kean
April 25, 2007

# re: A Setup Dialog you don't want to see

Can I just add, this is just a reminder to not install pre-release versions of Visual Studio on production machines. It is very likely you will need to format your system between Betas and CTPs - we do not spend time supporting upgrade scenarios for these.

Rick Strahl
April 25, 2007

# re: A Setup Dialog you don't want to see

So I also went ahead and ran the .NET 3.5 framework setup manually and it too fails with that MessageBox dialog... bummer.

But not quite unexpected <s>...

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