Installation

To provide incremental value to our customers, we have released Visual Studio Update 1 and will be notifying all Visual Studio 2012 customers via toast notifications (like you get for VS package updates) soon. Soma’s blog has more information on VSUpdate...

The Windows Installer XML (WiX) team has released version 3.6 which, most notably, released a powerful and customizable chainer named Burn . The Visual Studio 2012 setup applications were built on Burn using features such as package caching , reference...

Symptom Customers installing Visual Studio 2012 RTM on pre-release versions of Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 may see the following error after launching the setup application: The .Net Framework installed on this machine does not meet the...

Windows To Go is a cool new enterprise features to enable a mobile workforce to carry around an enterprise-managed installation of Windows on a USB thumb drive. However, only certified thumb drives appear as fixed drives and, therefore, Visual Studio...

This was a preview of a Knowledge Base article which has been published as KB2746268 . Symptom After Visual Studio 2012 has been installed, the finish page displays the following: Setup Completed However, not all features installed correctly...

Now that Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 have been released , some customers are wondering if they need to uninstall the Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate (RC) first before upgraded. In general, the answer is “no”. VS2012 RC will upgrade...

Administrators and developers who need to detect if Visual Studio 2012 is installed on a machine can use similar keys as those used for past releases like Visual Studio 2010 . In general, these detection keys are always found in the 32-bit registry hive...

Requiring source packages during installation , repairs , and even uninstall are common occurrences for some customers. The core issue is that Windows Installer needs the source location of the package and its files to install - and can't find them automatically...

Slipstreaming Windows Installer patches is, technically, installing the MSP simultaneously with the MSI as a single transaction. This is, effectively: msiexec /i D:\product.msi PATCH=D:\patch.msp The applicable transforms (both the authoring changes...

We have released a new revision of the July 2012 Update for VS2012 RC . This update replaces – or supersedes – the previous update , which means the download link is the same. We have retained the previous packages that VSUpdate installs – or chains ...

A few months ago we introduced a new method of delivering updates to Visual Studio 2012. Today we published updates in the same manner for Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidates. You can download the July 2012 update (KB2703187) for VS2012 RC from http...

A few customers have reported the following error after upgrading from VS2012 Beta to the Release Candidate (RC): Invalid License Data Reinstall is required. Aaron Marten on the Visual Studio Extensibility team has a post describing how...

On a day of many great Release Candidate (RC) announcements , I should not forget another important RC milestone: Windows Installer XML (WiX) v3.6 RC . We’ve made a lot of improvements, simplified some scenarios, and fixed a lot of bugs. Download v3.6...

Today we announced a new method of delivering updates using a notification system many Visual Studio developers should be familiar with: the Visual Studio Extension Manager. Developers will now be notified in Visual Studio when updates are available....

Users have asked why space is required on the system drive (typically the C: drive) when they choose to install Visual Studio 11 to another drive. While Visual Studio 11 does allow you to install the majority of features to another drive, VS11 still requires...

Along with the release of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview , we have released Visual Studio 11 Beta and Jason Zander has announced many of the great new and improved features in VS11 Beta. We have also introduced a new setup experience with VS11. Setup...

If you are installing Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 from across the network and are experiencing slow install times, this could be caused by low network bandwidth and long verification times. How to work around this issue For...

After installing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1, some users were unable to use the x64 or IA64 compilers from the Windows SDK 7.1. Now the Visual C++ team has released an update for VS2010 SP1 available here . For more information about the update...

While we recommend installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1 using the web download – which only downloads and install those packages needed on your machine – you can also download an ISO for offline use. If you downloaded the ISO for VS2010 SP1 from the Microsoft...

Now that Visual Studio 2010 SP1 has been released , administrators and developers may wish to install both RTM and SP1 together for a seamless experience. With the release of VS2010 RTM we already published the Visual Studio Administrator Guide that documents...

Some users are reporting that when installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1 they are prompted for MSI files as shown in the following example screenshot. These prompts for source are most common during rollback on failed install attempts and uninstall since...

As announced in Soma’s blog post , Visual Studio 2010 SP1 has been released to MSDN subscribers today and will release to the general public on Thursday, March 10th. We have made a number of significant changes in Visual Studio 2010 SP1 from past releases...

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...

Often I’m asked why installing a Windows Installer patch (MSP) takes as long or longer to install than the target product (MSI). While this isn’t always the case for every patch, it’s certainly possible for a number of reasons. It may also come as a surprise...

By installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta now (or tomorrow for general availability ), you have a great opportunity to provide early feedback before we ship VS2010 SP1 RTM. Not only do we welcome feedback on the updates to the product such as the new...