visual studio .net setup: Hello,

I'm having some problems installing Visual Studio 2005.
I'll briefly explain what's the history of the problem here.

First I installed VS 2005 beta 2.
I uninstalled it later via the Windows Uninstall Tool you can download.

Then I installed Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition ENU. This was a trial
version for 180 days.
Now the trial period has expired and I had to install another version.

I bought the VS 2005 Pro edition and I tried to uninstall the Team
Edition.

When I trie dto uninstall the Team Edition I got an error saying
"Uninstall failed".

Then I tried to hit the button repair/add features. This completed
without errors but nothing was changed. Again I tried to uninstall but
it didn't work either.

Then I just tried to install the pro version on my PC. This worked, but
when I ran this copy I got the same message at startup saying that the
trial period was expired.

I did an uninstall of this version, which completed succesfully. Now in
my control panel there's nowhere an entry of Visual Studio. But if I
try to install the Pro version again it says that the installation path
cannot be changed because there's still a Visual Studio 2005 Team
Edition left on my PC. I can't remove it because a. it's not in my
list, b. if it would, uninstall would fail.

Next I tried to remove every instance of Microsoft SQL Server 2005
tools such as reporting services, mobile tools, ....

This all worked except for "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Mobile Developer
Tools" which gave me an error 1361: A network error occurred reading
sqlmobiletools30.Msi or something like that. I seearched the registry
for that and I deleted the file. When I ran uninstall again I got
another error:

"Internal Error 2356: product.cab"

This means I cannot uninstall the previous version of Visual Studio
which has an expired date which apparently stays locked on the
following version I install.

Does anyone have any ideas about what to do to be able to install my
copy of VS2005???
Formatting is not an option ...

With kind regards,

Kenneth Truyers

[quoted text, click to view]
<snip>
I don't know if you've already seen this, but you'll need to follow all the
steps, regardless of result. This applies to installing the RTM after
installing betas or CTP's:

If you have installed previous versions of Visual Studio 2005, such as Beta
1 or Community Technical Preview (CTP) builds of Visual Studio Team Suite,
Visual Studio Standard or Visual Studio Professional, then you must
uninstall the pre-Beta2 components in the exact order below before beginning
to install any version of Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2. Be sure to uninstall
Framework last.



1. Go to the Control Panel and launch Add/Remove Programs

2. Remove "Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional" or other related
IDE installs such as (Visual Studio Professional/Standard/Enterprise
Architect/Team Suite, etc.)

3. Remove "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition"

4. Remove "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Tools Express Edition"

5. Remove "Microsoft SQL Native Client"

6. Remove "Microsoft Visual Studio 64bit Prerequisites Beta"

7. Remove "Microsoft MSDN Express Library 2005 Beta"

8. Remove "Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office System 2005
Runtime Beta"

9. Remove "Microsoft Device Emulator 1.0 Beta"

10. Remove all Microsoft Visual Studio Versions (such as Visual Studio
2005 Professional Beta)

11. Remove "Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0 Beta"

12. Remove "Microsoft SQL Mobile 2005 Development Tools"

13. Remove "Microsoft Visual J# .NET Redistributable 2.0 Beta Japanese (Or
other language) Language Pack. // This step is not needed if you only have
the English Edition. This step is needed for localized Product. E.g.
Japanese Express Edition

14. Remove "Microsoft Visual J# Redistributable Package 2.0 Beta". If you
receive an error message, see Note 1 below

15. Remove "Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Beta - Japanese (Or other
language) Language pack. // This step is not needed if you only have the
English Edition. This step is needed for localized Product. E.g. Japanese
Express Edition

16. Remove "Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Beta". If you receive an error
message, see Note 2 below


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes:

1. If you see an error removing J# .NET Redistributable Package 2.0
from Add/Remove Programs, please run "msiexec /x
{9046F10C-F5E7-4871-BED9-8288F19C70DF}" from a command line window

2. If you see an error removing .NET Framework 2.0 from Add/Remove
Programs, please run "msiexec /x {71F8EFBF-09AF-418D-91F1-52707CDFA274}"
from a command line window



In addition you might try going through your registry, removing all
references to the .NET Framework and Visual Studio.



If this all fails, you're at your "not an option". Save your data, wipe your
OS partition and reinstall the OS and applications.