MSDN January doesn't integrate with Visual Studio 2005?

January 24, 2006 @ 2:15 pm

So I got my MSDN Library CD today after I got back from LA CodeCamp this weekend and tried to install it. I've been running with the October Library CD because the install for Visual Studio seemed to be a smaller subset. I wanted to wait for the January CDs to be up to date.

To my chagrin however this latest version of MSDN doesn't integrate with Visual Studio 2005. Does that strike anybody else as weird that the latest version of MSDN wouldn't work with the latest version of the development tools? This gives you some idea how bad the whole MSDN Help infrastructure is and that even Microsoft can't manage to properly get the content merged into the Visual Studio Help system in a hurry. Or maybe it's that they can't support both VS.NET 2003 and 2005 at the same time? Who knows...

I suppose VS.NET integration is not something that I frequently use anyway, so I could have installed the full thing and use it externally which is what I do most of the time anyway, but I ended up installing the MSDN Help for Visual Studio from the VS install CDs…

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# re: MSDN January doesn't integrate with Visual Studio 2005?
by Brian January 25, 2006 @ 1:42 pm

Hi Rick,

Yeah, I just had the same problem last week and wasted about two hours. When I installed VS.NET 2005 on a new PC I didn't install the included help because I always replace it with the newest MSDN library. Well, it seemed to mess things up to the point that any F1 attempt within the VS.NET 2005 IDE only opened SQL 2005 help with only SQL 2005 filters. Beyond annoying coupled with the fact that I really needed Help (more than I knew apparently).

To add insult to injury, I couldn't find anywhere in the Options to manually redirect the Help Collection like you used to be able to do. I ended up uninstalling the Jan 06 MSDN and like you, installing the VS.NET 2005 help files.

# re: MSDN January doesn't integrate with Visual Studio 2005?
by Kevin Wright January 27, 2006 @ 3:00 am

My January CDs can with a slip of paper explaining these were the last for 2003, and the next issue will only integrate with 2005.

Kevin

# re: MSDN January doesn't integrate with Visual Studio 2005?
by Slava November 09, 2006 @ 4:48 pm

I have similar problem with damn MSDN library, only in my case it's MSDN that comes with Visual Studio 2005 and it's called "MSDN for Visual Studio 2005". However, it is so messed up, that it almost never works with F1 context sensitive search, always shows up a page "Information Not Found" :( Besides, it became so overblown with information from god knows where that it's ofthen easier to find a simple answer somewhere else.

# re: MSDN January doesn't integrate with Visual Studio 2005?
by snehal kadiya(snehal_iteng@yahoo.com November 17, 2006 @ 3:36 am

please tell me how to integrate msdn 2006 to visual studio 2005

if any one have the answer then plse send me the answer to my emailid: snehal_iteng@yahoo.com

thanks

# DotNetSlackers: MSDN January doesn't integrate with Visual Studio 2005?
by DotNetSlackers Latest ASP.NET News November 17, 2006 @ 1:01 pm

re: MSDN January doesn't integrate with Visual Studio 2005?
by Clive June 25, 2007 @ 11:54 pm

Has anybody solved this MSDN Jan 2005 - Visual Studio 2005 integration problem?

Ta
Clive

# re: MSDN January doesn't integrate with Visual Studio 2005?
by tt September 12, 2007 @ 1:46 pm

I had the same problem. Installing VS2005 SP1 fixed the problem for me.

re: MSDN January doesn't integrate with Visual Studio 2005?
by apen2007 September 28, 2007 @ 1:44 am

In my regestry editor，under this route----HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Help\0x0409
.there are 2 values:
{E589AA14-E52E-4f7c-88CF-E4E3C1260EEE} and
{221CD402-A57E-40D5-8341-46B37DB01B58}

the first one represent the my MSDN for VS 2005(my version is Apr.2007),and the second is the included help of VS 2005.

I can't switch to MSDN by pressing F1, until I made the "collection" subkey points to the second one listed above.