Error occurs installing Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta if KB944899 is installed.

If you have the first release of KB945140 installed on your system you may run across an error when trying to install Visual Studio SP1 Beta. Likewise if you have any previously released hot fix, VS may not install properly even though it reports success.  The work around is to manually remove traces of KB944899 from your system, or you can run a tool to do this for you.  For more information and details, you can check out Heath Stewart's blog post. 

Tool Instructions 

    Simply run the tool found at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/RemoveKB944899 prior to install.

Manual Instructions

For Vista or later:

1. Open Control Panel
2. Click on "Programs"
3. Click on "View installed updates"
4. Remove KB944899 listed under any versions of Visual Studio 2008

For earlier operating systems:

1. Open Control Panel
2. Click on "Add / Remove Programs"
3. Check "Show updates"
4. Remove KB944899 listed under any versions of Visual Studio 2008

If any other patches are installed on Visual Studio 2008 that you see in the list of updates, please open an elevated command prompt and run the following:

1. Check for other references to KB944899:
   
   reg.exe query HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Updates /f KB944899 /k /s
   
2. For each search result returned, copy the full key name (including spaces) and run the following command to delete them, replacing {key} with the search result:

reg.exe delete "{key}" /f