Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed

July 28, 2007 @ 2:54 am- from Hood River, Oregon

I'm happy to say that my VS 2008 Beta 1 to Beta 2 update went fairly smooth and I now have Beta 2 running on my dev machine with no problems. I was quite worried that this would be problematic - if you remember updating between betas during VS 2005 it was almost a requirement to pave over Windows and start over. This update went pretty smooth all things considered.

Watch out if you're doing a Beta 1 to Beta 2 reinstall

I did run into one major problem with the Beta 1 to Beta 2 migration:

The uninstall instructions (make sure you read these if you are updating from Beta 1!!!) missed one component or at least mislabeled it and so I didn't properly uninstall this component:

Microsoft Visual Studio Web Authoring Component

It's not on the list of components to uninstall but I suspect that Remove "Visual Web Developer Design Service Reminder Tools" probably references this same component by another name. Because of that I missed it at first since Visual Studio Web Authoring Component could have been a VS 2005 feature. It isn't <s>...

Before I manually uninstalled this component, I was able to install the .NET Framework 3.5 and Document Explorer, but as soon as the Visual Studio Installer kicked in the install aborted. The error log gives this:

***EndOfSession*** [07/27/07,12:45:47] setup.exe: [2] ISetupComponent::Pre/Post/Install() failed in ISetupManager::InternalInstallManager() with HRESULT -2147023293.
[07/27/07,12:45:49] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Web Designer Tools is not installed.
[07/27/07,12:45:50] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite - ENU was not attempted to be installed.
[07/27/07,12:45:50] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP2 was not attempted to be installed.
... more failures all the same

If you see this sort of thing make sure you check that you have indeed uninstalled all previous components.

Bottom line: Make sure you follow the uninstall instructions exactly and don't miss any components (which is easy to do because here's a lot of 'em and the names are very similar for many components).

Make sure you install the MS AJAX Patch

Microsoft also has a policy issue that affects usage of MS AJAX. If you use MS Ajax make sure you run this batch file which sets the proper access policy for the Ajax Libraries. Scott Guthrie has more detail:

1) You should download and run this batch file. This takes only a few seconds to run, and fixes an issue we found earlier this week with the version policy of System.Web.Extensions.dll - which is the assembly that contains ASP.NET AJAX. If you don't run this batch file, then existing ASP.NET 2.0 projects built with ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 and VS 2005 will end up automatically picking up the new version of ASP.NET AJAX that ships in .NET 3.5 Beta2. This will work and run fine - but cause you to inadvertently introduce a .NET 3.5 dependency in the applications you build with VS 2005. Running the batch file will change the version binding policy of the new System.Web.Extensions.dll assembly and ensure that you only use the new .NET 3.5 ASP.NET AJAX version with projects that you are explicitly building for .NET 3.5.

Up and Running

So Beta 2 is up and running and it looks like VS is even more snappy then Beta 1 was and which compared to VS 2005 is considerably more responsive in most respects, especially designer opening (most designers) and even more so the ASP.NET designer. I'm running the full install not VPC so I can get the full effect and (hopefully not - so far so good) pain. I also run VS 2005 and VS 2003 on the same Vista box and they all live happily together in a cozy little VS family.

I ran through all of my Orcas projects and hey they were still all working without any problems. Several of the designers I had problems with in Beta 1 (including the Linq to SQL designer) now properly work as do all the data tools. I was actually stoked to see the new Data Tools for schema and data comparison in the Team Edition - I've been meaning to check this out but never got to it. This integrated implementation might wean me off Red Gate's SqlCompare and SqlDataCompare which I've been very happy with for years (and I think are still easier to use than the VS stuff).

So far I haven't spent much time with any of the new 3.5 features simply because I had some issues in Beta 1 and - well without a goLive license it seems kind of pointless to start building production code. Since there's now the GoLive option I'll be spending more time with 3.5. First stop is reworking my generic business layer to take advantage of LINQ features.

Anyway - first day on Orcas has been good. I spend a good part of the day running Beta 2 and it's pretty solid. No crashes, no major unexpected behavior. VS 2005 is quickly fading into history in my environment since I've been running on Orcas for a couple of months now almost exclusively.

Things are good! Imagine that...

Posted in Visual Studio Visual Studio

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re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by Tom Pester July 28, 2007 @ 11:17 am

Hi Rick,

Are you running VS2003 on Vista fine? I heard some time ago MS didn't support this scenario although it could be done but with reduced functionality. I read somewhere that debugging support was limited if you used VS2003 on Vista.
Do you have any troubles with it?

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by Rick Strahl July 28, 2007 @ 11:56 am

I don't do much with VS 2003 anymore so I can't tell you in detail. Most of what I use(d) it for was for a few C++ projects which I've now moved to Orcas.

I think the issues have to do with rights - if you run VS 2003 as Admin there are no issues that I could tell some time back. Since I have UAC off anyway that's the only way I ever ran VS 2003 anyway.

+++ Rick ---

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by ajaxus July 30, 2007 @ 12:13 pm

Few minutes ago I also instaled Beta 2.... yes, all my previous Beta 1 projects were working but with great slowliness... Everything starts quite slow, switching between code and designer also takes time. Thats a little disappointment for me, but will have to see how can I improve that!
Cheers

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by Avatar July 30, 2007 @ 4:01 pm

It crashes all the time for us. Really unstable. We have two developers here and both of us are seriously considering going back to b1. I have one file that crashes VS just by opening it - other crashes seem related to intellisense. Hope MS produces something to fix the problem very soon, or we'll just have to go back to the previous beta, which had its share of problems but didn't crash every 15 minutes.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by Rick Strahl July 30, 2007 @ 4:12 pm

Interesting - I have pretty much the opposite experience. Beta 2 is much more stable for me and quicker as well both than VS 2005 (especially for the designer and markup editor) and Beta 1. I haven't crashed or locked up beta 2 yet since last Friday and I've been doing quite a bit of work with it over the weekend.

Curious Avatar - what type of project files?

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by Kerry Jenkins August 02, 2007 @ 10:54 am

Thanks Rick for the tip about uninstalling "Microsoft Visual Studio Web Authoring Component". I was getting the same error and found your post via google. Thank you very much for posting this.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by Jason G. Dove August 03, 2007 @ 10:50 am

Beta 2 also crashes for me all the time, specifically when using intellisense on a generic collection in a foreach loop. Something like...

GenericCollection<SomeItem> collection = new GenericCollection<SomeItem>();

foreach(SomeItem item in collection)
{
}

Any sort of intellisense on "item" inside the foreach loop will crash it, without fail. Now I'm stuck using notepad++ for editing, unless I move back to Beta 1.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by mansofta August 06, 2007 @ 9:52 am

I could not install Orcas Beta 2 on Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Ed. Error occurred every times even install on fresh copy of Windows 2003 Server SP2.

Product: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 (Pre-Release Version) -- Error 1304. Error writing to file: System.ServiceModel.Web.dll. Verify that you have access to that directory.

Can anyone help me?.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by Akil Franklin August 07, 2007 @ 10:29 am

I'm doing XBAP development and Orcas Beta 2 is crashing *constantly* for me as well. Perhaps once every half hour or so, the IDE simply closes without warning. No error, no request to debug... just *poof* and gone.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by nike August 20, 2007 @ 9:34 pm

I could not even download the full 3 Gb of it from the MS site. Everytime the download breaks at about 2-2.15 Gb. Donno why..

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by Arne August 27, 2007 @ 1:00 pm

Regarding download: use The Microsft Secure Content Downloader. It is an application specifically designed for downloading Studio 2008 Beta 2. It works fine.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by Rick Strahl August 27, 2007 @ 1:23 pm

Good suggestion. I've been fond of Free Download Manager (http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/) which is great tool for downloading even small files and get a handle on managing the massive amounts of files I end up downloading <s>.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by daniel September 01, 2007 @ 6:50 am

Hi All,

I have the same crashing experience. Intellisense crashes every time it is used on specific generic collections. I cannot reproduce the bug because it is really mysterious.

The problem comes forward when I use code written in beta1. Especially when I try to iterate through a generic collection which contains classes written in beta1. If I use the foreach on classes written in beta2, the problem doesn't occur. I found a similar bug: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=295081 , but I still cannot reproduce mine.

Any ideas?

Thanks

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by Brad Ford October 29, 2007 @ 12:26 pm

I can get it to crash consistently with a simple generic method...

public void Setter<DataType>()
{
DataType x = <crash here>

}

It appears anytime intellisense references the generic type, it crashes.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by Brad Ford October 29, 2007 @ 12:46 pm

I just found Microsoft released a patch that solved my problem...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=DC623F84-BEA6-4B8E-8A43-B654C3B6E4F6&displaylang=en

Even though the description is not *exactly* what I was experiencing, it fixed it nonetheless.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by Jeff October 30, 2007 @ 6:50 am

Is there somewhere I can find a feature comparison chart on VS 2k8 that shows the different features available across the different packages so I can figure out which version I should buy?

re: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Installed
by Harry McIntyre November 14, 2007 @ 3:33 am

Amusingly the patch Brad suggested crashes when we attempt to install it here :) roll on RC1!