About Windows Installer, the .NET Framework, and Visual Studio.
On average customers are experience ~45 minute installs for Visual Studio 2010 SP1. Based on machine performance, even seeing install times of a little over an hour isn’t unexpected. But if VS2010 SP1 is taking more than a couple hours to install, there could be a problem and in the case described below requires user action.
If Visual Studio 2010 SP1 is taking more than a couple of hours to install, it may be stuck in a loop waiting for the user to cancel the current operation. To determine if this is the case,
If you find that text in the temporary log file, please see the workaround below.
If the temporary log file was not found or you do not see this text, perhaps wait a while longer or reply below with the last few lines of the log file.
If you find the text in the steps above,
If the workaround does not work, please comment below or through various other support options described here.
How long does it take on average for the initial installation of VS2010?
On average, Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate installs in 34 minutes. Servicing updates - especially with as many updates includes in SP1 - can take longer to installed as detailed in blogs.msdn.com/.../a-patch-may-take-as-long-or-longer-to-install-than-the-target-product.aspx.
I've posted this before and one day I hope it'll be heard. I'd rather be able to go into MSDN Subscriber Downloads and download a fresh ISO that is a service release rather then have to spend 34 minutes installing RTM then another 45 minutes installing the SP. An hour and twenty minutes to install and patch an application is just too long in my opinion.
Did I miss the post that SP1 was released? Or has this issue been picked up in beta and been marked as "will not fix" for the SP1 final release?
@Christopher, there's an open issue on Connect where people have been voting to get the ability to either slipstream service packs, or if that's not possible to have access to an integrated ISO on MSDN, which would be the ideal option. Hopefully Microsoft are listening:
connect.microsoft.com/.../provide-ability-to-slipstream-visual-studio-2010-sp1-into-rtm-release-of-visual-studio-2010
We will make announcements when Visual Studio 2010 SP1 is available to customers. The issue described here is incredibly rare, but is meant to document the issue (including searchable log lines) and provide customers with a workaround should they hit this.
I thought I'd share a tip that might spare others some time.
I unzipped the ISO and installed by doubleclicking on setup.exe. After waiting more than 1.5 hours the installation failed. According to the log it was because I lacked administrative rights.
I relaunched the setup.exe file by right-clicking on it and selecting "Run as administrator". This time the seutup completeted successfully in under 1 hour. So even though I am a local administrator on my Win 7 machine I had to launch this way.
Hi,
My installation of VS2010 SP1 seemed to hang during the install of the "VS2010-KB983509" part. I left it for nearly one hour and the progress bar didn't move at all. I then tried to cancel, and it also hung for another hour or so. I eventually had to kill the process via Task Manager.
Upon following your advice above, my HFI*.tmp.html file was over 48 GIG in size (!!). The search text as specified above was NOT found in the file, but the last few lines are as follows:
<span class="wrn"><span class="t">[3/10/2011, 10:42:7]</span> Returning IDNO. INSTALLMESSAGE_USER [Are you sure you want to cancel?]<BR></span>
<span class="err"><span class="t">[3/10/2011, 10:42:7]</span> Returning IDCANCEL. INSTALLMESSAGE_WARNING [Warning 1946.Property 'System.AppUserModel.ExcludeFromShowInNewInstall' for shortcut 'Manage Help Settings - ENU.lnk' could not be set.]<BR></span>
This is repeated over and over. About 10 or 12 entries per second (explains the 48GB file size!)
I'm not sure if these entries are generated when the installer first hung during installation, or during my attempted uninstallation by clicking cancel.
Please help!
@Kai, setup.exe in SP1 is manifested to require administrative rights and block installation if the process is not elevated. What are your UAC settings on Windows 7 so we can help diagnose what is happening?
@CraigTP, thank you for reporting this issue. Yes, it is the same issue but in the very few cases we saw it was the same shortcut in the original post. With your comment, search engines should help with users running into this with that as well. Thank you.
As this is a transient issue, restarting the SP1 install should succeed. If not, please provide feedback her or through Connect at connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio.
I sure wish I had google'd (with bing ;)) for this issue when I encountered it two days ago. My install stalled on NDP40-KB2468871.exe. It had been running for over 2 hours. Luckily, the cancel actually worked and (eventually) rolled back what it had to. Ironically, I followed the steps provided in this post. Upon a reboot, the reinstall, which I THINK had significantly less to install because the startup list was far shorter, went much smoother and completed in less than 30 minutes.
Hi Heath,
Thanks for your reply. I did do the "rollback" required, which involved using Windows' Add/Remove programs to uninstall all individual components of the complete VS2010 installation, then re-installed/repaired VS2010 RTM version from the original media before finally re-installing VS2010 SP1 again.
I had left the VS2010 SP1 install running whilst I went out for the evening and by the time I came back, some 3 hours later, the install had this time finished and completed successfully! Yay!
Had a problem where it was asking for vs_intShell_enu.msi and it was nowhere to be found. Cancelled and restored my entire machine back to an Acronis image backup that I made right before trying to install the SP1. This is ridiculous. Doesn't Microsoft test their service packs thoroughly any more or are they like everybody else that doesn't seem to care anymore???
Same as CraigTP here, except with:
Warning 1946.Property 'System.AppUserModel.ExcludeFromShowInNewInstall' for shortcut 'Spy++ (64-bit).lnk' could not be set. HRESULT 32.
Are you sure you want to cancel?
@Peeved, this types of errors we find through collected data are rare and can be worked around. This happens when files are missing from the original install prior to SP1 that must be replaced, so original source media is required. What Visual Studio 2010 SKUs do you have installed? I can help you find where it can be located on your installation media.