Now that I have posted items about how to create a network install point for a Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition and about how to silently install a Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition, it is time to post part 3 of what I had originally envisioned to be a series of items about deploying the Express Editions.

In this post, I will extend upon the topic of creating a network install point and demonstrate how to create a network install point that can be used to install all of the Express Editions from a single location.  This topic is more advanced than my previous posts, and it requires some modifications to setup data files, but it is all achievable with a few relatively simple steps.  This overall post is long, but that is only because I am listing specific steps for each individual Express Edition separately to make it easier to read.

At a high level, what we will be doing is downloading the individual packages for each Express Edition and then downloading the prerequisite packages (which are common to all Express Editions).  Then we will update the setup data file for each Express Edition to force setup to search for the prerequisite packages in a common location so they only have to be downloaded and stored on the network install point once.

Here are the specific steps to accomplish this:

1. Create a folder named c:\Express_Editions
2. Follow the steps in Option 1 or Option 2 of the article entitled How to create an installable layout for Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions to stage a network share for the Visual WebDev 2005 Express Edition, and stage it to c:\Express_Editions\VWD instead of the folder c:\visual_webdev listed in that article
3. Copy the contents of the folder c:\Express_Editions\VWD\wcu up one directory to c:\Express_Editions\wcu
4. Open the file named c:\Express_Editions\VWD\setup.sdb in a text editor such as notepad
5. Locate the section named [CD Info] in setup.sdb, and for each component that contains the relative folder path wcu\<folder>, change this path to be ..\wcu\<folder>.  This allows setup to find the component setup package in the new location that you copied the WCU folder to in step 3 above
6. Save and close setup.sdb

Now, for each of the other 4 Express Editions (Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition, Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition, Visual C# 2005 Express Edition and Visual J# 2005 Express Edition), follow the set of steps listed below to add them to the network image.

Once you have staged the desired Express Editions, you can run the individual setup.exe files in the c:\Express_Editions\<edition_name> subfolders to run each setup in full UI mode, or you can use steps like those listed in this blog post to install the Express Editions in silent mode.

Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition

1. Download the web download bootstrapper for the Express Edition and save it to your local hard drive
2. Create a new folder named c:\Express_Editions\VB
3. Extract the contents of the web download bootstrapper to the folder c:\Express_Editions\VB by running vbsetup.exe /t:c:\Express_Editions\VB /c
4. Go to c:\Express_Editions\VB and open the file baseline.dat in a text editor such as Notepad
5. Open a web browser and build a URL by typing http://go.microsoft.com/ and appending the data stored in the URL value in the [vs_setup.dll] section of baseline.dat.  The desired URL is http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=51415 for Visual Basic.
6. Navigate to the URL that you created in step 5 and choose to save the file ixpvb.exe to the folder c:\Express_Editions\VB
7. Open the file named c:\Express_Editions\VB\setup.sdb in a text editor such as notepad
8. Locate the section named [CD Info] in setup.sdb, and for each component that contains the relative folder path wcu\<folder>, change this path to be ..\wcu\<folder>.  This allows setup to find the component setup package in the new location that you copied the WCU folder to in step 3 above
9. Save and close setup.sdb

Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition

1. Download the web download bootstrapper for the Express Edition and save it to your local hard drive
2. Create a new folder named c:\Express_Editions\VC
3. Extract the contents of the web download bootstrapper to the folder c:\Express_Editions\VC by running vcsetup.exe /t:c:\Express_Editions\VC /c
4. Go to c:\Express_Editions\VC and open the file baseline.dat in a text editor such as Notepad
5. Open a web browser and build a URL by typing http://go.microsoft.com/ and appending the data stored in the URL value in the [vs_setup.dll] section of baseline.dat.  The desired URL is http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=51417 for Visual C++
6. Navigate to the URL that you created in step 5 and choose to save the file ixpvc.exe to the folder c:\Express_Editions\VC
7. Open the file named c:\Express_Editions\VC\setup.sdb in a text editor such as notepad
8. Locate the section named [CD Info] in setup.sdb, and for each component that contains the relative folder path wcu\<folder>, change this path to be ..\wcu\<folder>.  This allows setup to find the component setup package in the new location that you copied the WCU folder to in step 3 above
9. Save and close setup.sdb

Visual C# 2005 Express Edition

1. Download the web download bootstrapper for the Express Edition and save it to your local hard drive 
2. Create a new folder named c:\Express_Editions\VCSharp
3. Extract the contents of the web download bootstrapper to the folder c:\Express_Editions\VCSharp by running vcssetup.exe /t:c:\Express_Editions\VCSharp /c
4. Go to c:\Express_Editions\VCSharp and open the file baseline.dat in a text editor such as Notepad
5. Open a web browser and build a URL by typing http://go.microsoft.com/ and appending the data stored in the URL value in the [vs_setup.dll] section of baseline.dat.  The desired URL is http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=51418 for Visual C#
6. Navigate to the URL that you created in step 5 and choose to save the file ixpvcs.exe to the folder c:\Express_Editions\VCSharp
7. Open the file named c:\Express_Editions\VCSharp\setup.sdb in a text editor such as notepad
8. Locate the section named [CD Info] in setup.sdb, and for each component that contains the relative folder path wcu\<folder>, change this path to be ..\wcu\<folder>.  This allows setup to find the component setup package in the new location that you copied the WCU folder to in step 3 above
9. Save and close setup.sdb

Visual J# 2005 Express Edition

1. Download the web download bootstrapper for the Express Edition and save it to your local hard drive
2. Create a new folder named c:\Express_Editions\VJSharp
3. Extract the contents of the web download bootstrapper to the folder c:\Express_Editions\VJSharp by running vjssetup.exe /t:c:\Express_Editions\VJSharp /c
4. Go to c:\Express_Editions\VJSharp and open the file baseline.dat in a text editor such as Notepad
5. Open a web browser and build a URL by typing http://go.microsoft.com/ and appending the data stored in the URL value in the [vs_setup.dll] section of baseline.dat.  The desired URL is http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=51420 for Visual J#.
6. Navigate to the URL that you created in step 5 and choose to save the file ixpvjs.exe to the folder c:\Express_Editions\VJSharp
7. Open the file named c:\Express_Editions\VJSharp\setup.sdb in a text editor such as notepad
8. Locate the section named [CD Info] in setup.sdb, and for each component that contains the relative folder path wcu\<folder>, change this path to be ..\wcu\<folder>.  This allows setup to find the component setup package in the new location that you copied the WCU folder to in step 3 above
9. Save and close setup.sdb