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Uninstalling previous Visual Studio 2005 betas to prepare to install beta 2

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Now that Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0 beta 2 is about to be available, I wanted to communicate a couple of issues we have seen related to uninstalling previous beta and Community Tech Preview (CTP) versions that can cause problems when you try to install beta 2.

Uninstall should be done in the reverse order of installation

I'm sure you've noticed the large number of entries that are added to your Add or Remove Programs control panel after installing Visual Studio. There are a lot of sub-products being installed silently as a part of Visual Studio setup and there are some specific ordering issues that are enforced during install because Visual Studio manages the chaining of the installation. But the ordering is not enforced during uninstall. The biggest problem we have seen is that uninstalling the .NET Framework before trying to uninstall Visual Studio, the J# redistributable, MSDN, or SQL Express will cause those other products to leave behind files in the GAC. This is because the .NET Framework is the ship vehicle for Fusion, which is the technology that manages GAC install/uninstall. So, in general the safest way to uninstall is to treat the list of products as a computer science stack and uninstall them in the reverse order they were installed.  Hong Gao, a program manager on the setup team, has posted sets of instructions on her blog for the Visual Studio 2005 Express SKUs and for other Visual Studio 2005 SKUs that I strongly recommend you follow.

Update - Whidbey Beta 2 is now available, and there is now a more official list of uninstall steps and the correct order to uninstall in. Click here to see the uninstall list/order.

Uninstall for previous versions of the .NET Framework 2.0 may not be completely clean

Most often, the way you will notice this issue is if you see a failure while installing a future version of the .NET Framework 2.0 after uninstalling a previous version. You can find a detailed explanation for how to workaround this issue in my previous blog post.

After installing Visual Studio, the IDE may fail to launch or you may see multiple Package Load Failure error dialogs

This is caused by some known issues in previous beta and CTP versions related to installing native Win32 assemblies to the %windir%\WinSxS cache. To workaround these issues please try the following steps:

  • From a cmd prompt, run eventvwr.exe
  • Go to the System event log and look for error logs with the event source SideBySide
  • Find the name of any assemblies mentioned in these entries in the System event log
  • Go to %windir%\WinSxS and rename the folders with names that are the same or similar to the entries in the System event log (for example *.VC80.*)
  • Launch Visual Studio 2005 setup again, and choose to repair the product

As always, please let me know if any of these workarounds do not work for you. Also, I strongly encourage you to use the MSDN Product Feedback site to report any bugs that you find with uninstalling previous versions or installing new versions. I'll update my blog with other common issues and suggested workarounds as they arise.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 16, 2005
    Personally, I'd rather just delete my VHD profile and start over from my base image. Beta 2 is definitely rock solid and I don't foresee too many problems, but you just can't beat the isolation of Virtual PC.

    Good advice as always though, Aaron.
  • Anonymous
    April 17, 2005
    I know I'm a little late jumping on this particular bandwagon and posting a blog item about it, but just...
  • Anonymous
    April 17, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    April 17, 2005
    Hvis du, ligesom jeg, har haft mange forskellige version af Visual Studio 2005 på din maskine over...
  • Anonymous
    April 18, 2005
    Damien - can you use Windows Explorer to check and see if there are any files/folders named VC80 in your %windir%WinSxS folder. If so can you check the version of any files in those folders? If they do not match the VS 2005 beta 2 version number (8.0.50215.45) then please delete the folders and try to run repair for VS 2005.

    Also, you mentioned that VS 2005 beta 2 repair did not work for you. Could you please briefly describe exactly where you went to try to invoke the repair? It should launch correctly if you use the Add/Remove Programs entry for VS 2005, or if you run the setup.exe in the Setup subdirectory on the VS 2005 installation CD/DVD.
  • Anonymous
    April 19, 2005
    Steps I have followed:

    Install beta 2 -> package load failures
    check WinSxS - rename .VC80. to .VC80..temp
    attempt repair option - clicking repair link has no effect
    Install beta 2 -> package load failures
    Run beta removal tool
    Install beta 2 -> package load failures
    .dll files in WinSxS subdirctories have version 8.0.50215.44
    delete WinSxS/    .VC80.* directories
    Repair/Reinstall beta 2... 2 hours and several reboots later...

    Attempt to start up VS.2005.beta2 ->

    The application or DLL C:WINNTsystem32MSVCR80.dll is not a valid Windows image. Please check this against your installation diskette.
  • Anonymous
    April 19, 2005
    Oh one last thing - after the final step, the dlls in WinSxS/.VC80./ have version number 8.0.50215.44
  • Anonymous
    April 22, 2005
    Damien, if you haven't already, please try to use the updated cleanup tool that I posted last night. You can find it at http://astebner.sts.winisp.net/Tools/vs2005_beta_cleanup_tool.zip. Thanks!
  • Anonymous
    May 20, 2005
    I am trying to uninstall .NET 2.0 Beta 2 but the VS 2005 Beta 2 installer still tells me its installed. Its not in Add/Remove Programs, or is listed with msicuu Can you tell me the product code for .NET 2.0 Beta 2 so I can msizap it
    MTIA
  • Anonymous
    May 20, 2005
    The product code for the .NET Framework 2.0 beta 2 is {7A1ADD0C-17F3-47B8-B033-A06E189C835D}.

    For anyone interested, you can install Orca from the Windows Installer Platform SDK or directly from http://www.winisp.net/astebner/bin/orca.msi. Then you can extract the MSI from the .NET Framework beta 2 setup package by running dotnetfx.exe /t:c:temp /c. Then right-click on c:tempnetfx.msi and choose Edit with Orca. Finally, go to the Property table and look at the Product Code value.
  • Anonymous
    May 21, 2005
    I had the same error about the Toolbox not being available. After Installing and uninstalling 3 times I deleted the VC80 files
    (1 of them wouldnt delete so i had to go to safe mode). I then ran the Uninstall utility and reinstalled. It works! Thanks

    Gary
  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2007
    PingBack from http://mikesdump.wordpress.com/2005/04/16/uninstalling-vsnet-2005-pre-beta-2/