Posts Tagged ‘Visual Studio’

Uninstalling Visual Studio 2008 (All Versions)

February 2nd, 2009 49 Comments

Many months after installing Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 on a laptop, I decided I only wanted to program through Visual Studio from my a desktop. I figured uninstalling would be as simple as clicking an icon from the Remove Program feature of Windows Vista. I discovered this to be entirely untrue. When trying to uninstall the main application, I kept getting the following error dialog box stating: “A problem has been encountered while loading the setup components. Canceling setup.” The installation would then cancel (as promised by the message).

I tried many options like trying to uninstall the other Visual Studio 2008 related components and reinstalling Visual Studio 2008 to fix any potential problems, then uninstall. None of these worked!

Finally, I found a link from Microsoft’s MSDN website that contained a free downloadable executable that in one-click uninstalled Visual Studio 2008 from my desktop. It works for Visual Studio 2008 Release Candidate and official release version (English version only). A direct link to this site is at: Uninstalling Visual Studio 2008. The site also contains instructions on which extra Visual Studio 2008 related components to uninstall. Good luck!

-UPDATED- (Thanks to Carrajola)
The link is now here: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/content/content.aspx?ContentID=7276

-UPDATED- (Thanks to John Bremer)
A new download link at http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/9/d/e9d80355-7ab4-45b8-80e8-983a48d5e1bd/msicuu2.exe

Posted in Visual Studio Tags: , ,

Download Free Legal Microsoft Software

January 23rd, 2009 No Comments

Microsoft has in the past offered their software to college/university students free of charge. The key was you needed to be an active student and find the download from the university/college website. Now, there is a website called Dreamspark where all the free software can be found! Some of the software available include:

  1. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
  2. Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
  3. Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Express
  4. Microsoft Expressions Studio 2
  5. Microsoft Sql Server 2008 Developer
  6. Microsoft Sql Server Express
  7. Windows Server 2008 Standard
  8. Windows Server 2003
  9. XNA Game Studio 2.0
  10. Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Express Edition
  11. Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition
  12. Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Expression Edition
  13. Microsoft Visual Web Developer  2008 Express Edition
  14. Microsoft Virtual PC

All software either comes embedded with a serial key or can be obtained through the website. All that is required is an email address of the college in which you attended. A copy of the software can be downloaded directly from Dreamspark.

New to the site is free download for high school students. All you need is to get your High School administrator to register on the Dreamspark and you can get your free legal copy. Visit Dreamspark to find more information.

Posted in Software, Visual Studio Tags: , , ,

Visual Studio 2008 Quick Start

January 8th, 2009 2 Comments

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is by far one of my personal favorite Integrated Development Environments (IDE). However, it is also no secret some aspects of the IDE are overly bloated and therefore take forever to load or execute. One portion that drives me crazy is the time it takes Visual Studio 2008 to load up. By default (after a standard installation), Visual Studio 2008 opens the start page, which a screen containing recently open solutions as well as links to MSDN containing latest Microsoft programming news. I never looked at the news and instead always immediately opened a solution.

Now, I have run across a setting buried deep in the options that allows this to be changed to any one of following options:

  1. Open Home Page
  2. Load last loaded solution
  3. Show Open Project dialog box
  4. Show New Project dialog box
  5. Show empty environment
  6. Show Start Page

I chose “Show Open Project dialog box” which for my needs makes the most sense. Nearly 95% of my time I open Visual Studio, my aim is to add new features or fix bugs. It loads blazing fast as compared to”Open Home Page” or “Show Start Page” because no overheard is required to visit the MSDN website.

The options dialog box in Visual Studio 2008

To get to the dialog box, go to Tools > Options. Once in the dialog box, you go to Environment > Startup. Simply use the Dropdown Box and select your desired startup option.

If you do make a change (or have made a change prior to reading this article), what setting do you use?

Posted in Visual Studio Tags: ,
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