So I went home Tuesday night with the downloaded RTM bits in hand prepped for a late night install. The download experience was excellent: it took all of about 10-15 minutes to pull it all down while in the office - couldn't wait. And I had it prior to the onslaught of VS bits on the wire that must have happened that night. Isn't everyone waiting with bated breath for this release?
Visual Studio Orcas (2008) Betas and CTPs have been of awesome quality and I've had excellent experiences with the uninstall/installs all along side-by-siding - until now.
Hell, it had been a while since I'd wiped the machine anyway - right. And what better time than for a VS release: one of my, if not the, primary tools.
Yeah - that's what it took. I should say: I'm not willing to jump through too many hoops to troubleshoot an install. Especially, on a machine that's undertaken such Beta torture since being re-upped on. As the pre-releases were so surprisingly smooth, and stable once up, I had no expectation this time that it would come to this. Truth be told - it was a hateful experience.
The Rundown
So first, while uninstalling Beta 2 the setup hung for about an hour. It was late, the mother-in-law was in town, but I did some reading and found some nuggets, again, on Rick Strahl's blog. He'd recommended to uninstall some components manually first. I killed it as it was futile and after a reboot I took the suggestion. This seemingly freed up the problem for the uninstall but it still took a really long time and, though few, confirmations were still needed. You know, can't just cut it off mid-stream...
Took two days away from the machine as Thanksgiving came and family beacons. Happy late turkey day - BTW!
When I got back at it I attempted an install of the RTM bits. What the *#@&! It's hung after a couple of hours - no errors, couldn't find anything on the web. The curse of early adoption - right. So I killed it and retried after doing some research (multiple times) - it never panned out. I figured I'd sleep on it and see what I could do Saturday morning before other duties turned up. Saturday's attempt faired the same - no real progress.
The backups start...
I like having a newly installed machine but not since Vista RTM'd have I re-upped so I was not looking forward to this. Multiple backups - just in case (OneCare and manual file drops). As backups are the most boring thing ever it took till Sunday morning for me to really get it done.
Sunday, after going to the airport, the Vista Ultimate install commenced. Vista installs really nice - YES, finally! IIS is configured and SQL Server's installed (multi-step SPs ya-da-ya-da). Office 2007 - well it took a bit but just grunt work - got it all up. As a heads-up: if you have an MSDN subscription, don't opt for the Pro install and then individuals like OneNote, Grove, Project Pro, Visio, etc. just pull Enterprise, your list of stragglers will be smaller.
Visual Studio 2005 - this was quite painless but, again, it took a while: remember SP1 and SP1 update for Vista...
Visual Studio 2008 - I was in the Statêra office Monday so I kicked it off there in the morning. I walked away as I had a conference call with a Microsoft Services colleague and came back. SKREECHING OF TIRES AND THEN A HUGE BLUNT CRASH sound rang in my ears. On the screen was a prompt for, and let me remind you this is an MSDN DVD ISO, disk #3 (attempting to install the .NET 3.5 framework). My shoulders scrunched and I moped away to get a Perrier with lemon flavored stuff.
So I came back found the file it was looking for in the ISO (mounted using Daemon Tools) and pointed it at that directory. It wouldn't take it... I'm turning red.
Redemption
I did a search for VS 2008 install issues and found this cryptic MSDN newsgroup post titled Visual Studio 2008 Fails to compile on Vista Ultimate. The title and subjects were vaguely (stretching) relevant and the post was a bit over my head as many of these types of troubleshooting posts are.
Remember I mentioned I don't like to troubleshoot installs: I was in a pickle though, and hell, how else could I post on my experiences with the tool (or the install for that matter) - so I tried it. The one from BFaassen about installing the files in the \WCU\dotNetFramework\dotNetMSP\x86 folder:
As a heads-up, I attempted the install of the others there, the RTM ones: they both ran successfully but reported that the KBs were not installed. And, oh yeah, they all require a reboot if successfully installed. WING'N IT - HUH...
I re-attempted the install after reboots and after a nail biter of a while (not too long) - the VS 2008 RTM install was successful!
WHEW! Now to test the issue Bennie's been having: he reported that the XAML editor was not working. I tested it by simply creating some buttons and sure enough it worked for me. I'll take it! NAH-NAH-NAH-NAH-NAH...
So there are a number of posts in the MSDN managed newsgroups and elsewhere showing issues with the install. I don't have a feel, at all, for volume of problems and it could certainly be light for all I know. I can report, though, that Bennie's up in arms over his experience too. I opted out of beers with him last night as I could feel the flames over IM.
Kidding of course - I wouldn't turn down a Stella: that's crazy talk. 
