techmania

What to do if installation of Visual Studio 2008 failed...

Common Steps to diagnosis the problem:
       1.   First ensure that all of the beta stuff in your machine is gone: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2008/bb964521.aspx

       2.   Install the latest Windows updates.

       3.   Check if there is any anti-virus or antispyware running. Turn them off before installation.

       4.   Make sure that the installation media is healthy. If the installation from DVD is not working well, you can try copying the contents of the disc to the hard disk and try the installation from the hard disk.

       5.   Temporarily disable/dismiss Windows Update during installation (especially in Vista see: http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2007/11/13/6190778.aspx)

       6.   Collect the setup log file and analyze them. Clean the %TEMP% folder and reproduce installation failure. We will see the log files generated in %TEMP%.

You could utilize the collect tool from here: http://astebner.sts.winisp.net/Tools/Collect.zip

It is a Win32 console application, so you can extract it from the zip file and double-click on it to run it.  It will create a file named %TEMP%\vslogs.cab on your system after it has gathered all of the log files.

Note - After running the tool, you can go to your %TEMP% folder to find the file vslogs.cab by clicking on the “Start” menu, choosing Run and runing “%TEMP%” (without quotation marks). While running the collect tool, it may take some time to collect log files on your machine, please be patient.

For more information, see: http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2007/08/01/4172276.aspx

      7.   Try using Process Monitor to track whether there is any file/registry access related issue. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/ProcessesAndThreads/processmonitor.mspx , the log can be really large and you can make use of “Filter” feature to filter the result.

What to do when you go to post a setup and deployment issue on the MSDN forums?
http://blogs.msdn.com/aaronru/archive/2007/12/10/what-to-do-when-you-go-to-post-a-setup-and-deployment-issue-on-the-msdn-forums.aspx

Useful references follow:
      Visual Studio 2008 Setup Troubleshooting Guide: http://blogs.msdn.com/varungupta/archive/2007/12/04/visual-studio-2008-setup-troubleshooting-guide.aspx

      Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 setup log files: http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2007/07/31/4156781.aspx

      Uninstalling Visual Studio 2008: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2008/bb968856.aspx (NOTE: this tool does not remove .NET Framework 3.5)

.NET Framework 3.5 installation problem specified:
      .NET Framework 3.5 Installation validation tool: http://blogs.msdn.com/aaronru/archive/2007/11/29/net-framework-3-5-installation-validation-tool.aspx

      Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Readme: http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/a/e/9ae0f6cc-7032-408e-9ca7-989f9e4af4ec/dotNetReadMe.htm 

      How to avoid OS reboot prompt when installing the .NET Framework 3.5 on Windows Vista: http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2007/11/13/6190778.aspx 

      How to repair the .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0 on Windows Vista: http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2007/03/26/how-to-repair-the-net-framework-2-0-and-3-0-on-windows-vista.aspx

      Updated .NET Framework cleanup tool: http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2007/12/04/6659905.aspx 

For further study:

·         http://blogs.msdn.com/aaronru/

·         http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/

·         http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths/

·         http://blogs.msdn.com/varungupta/

·         http://blogs.msdn.com/pmarcu

• http://blogs.msdn.com/windows_installer_team
• http://installsite.org
• http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/aa372866
• http://robmensching.com
• http://joyofsetup.com

  If you have any successful installation experience or good articles recommended, please just reply to this thread, I believe that people around here will benefit. J

Thanks