No doubt you've heard the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 was released . Aaron Stebner has posted a list of links to 3.5, as well as 2.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and 3.0 SP1. It's important to note that if you install 3.5 you're actually getting 2.0 SP1 and...

While we hope you’ll love Visual Studio 2010 for all the application development it enables with powerful features and a robust extension model that enables great extensions like the Productivity Power Tools , if you ever need to uninstall Visual Studio...

Describes the contents of a patch, as well as any other Windows Installer file type....

One of the most-reported feedback issues with Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Beta is about how long it takes to install. There are, unfortunately, a couple things that account for this and currently nothing we can do to prevent them. We have been considering...

What patches do when being installed or uninstalled....

After the Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate (RC) is installed, there is a button to install the documentation locally. If you have overlooked this option or chose not to install documentation locally and wish to do so later, you can follow these instructions...

When installing Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 , you may see an error like the following (file name will vary): Error 1718.File D:\WINDOWS\Installer\50baad.msp was rejected by digital signature policy. Knowledge Base article 925336 had originally...

Quite a few beta customers have reported that the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Beta install requires a lot of space. This is by design a feature of Windows Installer. The amount of space required to install the patch can be reduced but a lot of space...

Visual Studio 2005 works for the most part on Windows Vista, but there are some known issues being addressed beyond SP1. One compatibility issue when running on Vista with UAC enabled may actually occur when installing the recently released SP1 beta on...

When installing Visual Studio 2008, you might run into an error dialog that reads, Error 1330.A file that is required cannot be installed because the cabinet file D:\cab1.cab has an invalid digital signature. This may indicate that the cabinet file is...

When attempting to add features to Visual Studio 2008 after it has already been installed, you may see an error that reports, A problem has been encountered while loading the setup components. Canceling setup. Fix Updated: a hotfix has been...

Before installing Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 , you should first uninstall KB944899 , a hotfix which improves performance when stepping through source downloaded from a source server. If KB944899 is not removed prior to Visual Studio 2008 SP1...

In developer forums in which I participate I often read and respond to questions asking about COM interoperability (interop) and my reply is almost always the same. There are guidelines - if not rules - for exposing .NET Framework components to COM and...

How to find mail and posts in public folders in Outlook quickly using Windows Desktop Search....

After installing Security Update KB928365 for the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 to fix MS07-040 , some users are noticing some managed applications - especially those developed using the Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) - are running sluggish. The...

Windows File Protection is a feature that prevents critical files from being replaced by unauthorized programs. Currently, the only applications capable of updating WFP-protected files are the following: Hotfix.exe for hotfix installations Update...

Windows Installer is an engine for performing transactional installations. When installing a product for the fist time, most often few or no files to be installed are already present on the machine. But when upgrading or patching a product, most often...

If you need to repair Visual Studio 2008 once SP1 has been applied or wish to change which features are installed, you cannot run setup.exe from the original installation media. When you run repair from media you may see an error like, "A problem has...

Set up Visual Studio 2005 to download debug symbols....

A security update for ATL, KB971092 , is currently offered for Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 customers who have Visual C++ installed. If Microsoft Update is continuously offering this patch to you, you may need to clear up some disk space. The patch...

How to get msi.lib for use in Visual Studio 2005....

The Visual Studio 2008 RTM and SP1 detection keys are largely the same as the Visual Studio 2005 SP1 detection keys , and are documented below. But there is a caveat for released and upcoming versions: the shared detection value can be overwritten by...

In response to a previous post where I mentioned that work was being done on Visual Studio 2005 SP1, reader ringi commented , "I would match rather has SP1 as a complete 4GB install, including having to uninstall Visual Studio 2005 then have it delayed...

Now that WiX v3.6 has been released , I introduce the managed bootstrapper application (MBA) interoperability layer. It’s been available for a while actually, and if you’ve installed any builds of WiX v3.6, or the Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0 Developer...

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...