Installing Visual Studio 2008

We finally got around to installing Visual Studio 2008 at work the other day and while everyone had a simple time of it on their clean new Vista machines (quad core, 4GB, 500GB, dual 22" monitors) my icky old XP SP2 laptop refused to play the game. Setup was repeatedly failing to install the Web Authoring Component. The .NET Framework 3.5 went in without hassle.

I tried uninstalling 3.5 and starting fresh, checked the event log and the install log but had nothing to guide me on my way. Error info was hard to come by but the Web Authoring Component installer was definitely faltering, identified by this: ISetupComponent::Pre/Post/Install() failed in ISetupManager::InternalInstallManager() with HRESULT -2147023293.

For the record, this machine has VS 2003, VS 2005, MCMS 2002, VSS 2005, SharePoint Designer 2007, and Office 2007 (including Visio and Project) installed.

I got it working in the end so here are a handful of tips to assist with your troubled install journey:

• Nothing of use gets logged to the event logs with this problem so don't bother looking there.
• The install log presented by the installer on failure is high level and won't tell you much.
• Additional install logs get dropped to your %temp% directory (in my case this was C:\Documents and Settings\mhanes\Local Settings\Temp). dd_error_vs_vstscore_90.txt identified the HRESULT error mentioned above but Googling this wasn't too helpful. dd_install_vs_vstscore_90.txt didn't hold much info. A MS site somewhere suggested clearing the contents of this directory before attempting to reinstall again but that didn't help in my case.
• SetupExe.log (from the same directory), however, was quite useful. It informed me, like others, that I had Office 2007 beta software installed on my machine (and this same problem most likely prevented me from installing Groove a few months back). The VS 2008 installer is apparently tied up with the Office 2007 installer or something like that. At the bottom of this file, I was told "Catalyst beta product conflict check failed. Office Beta product conflict is detected on the computer, productcode={30120000-00B2-0409-0000-0000000FF1CE}". As far I knew, I didn't actually have any Office beta software installed so I was puzzled by this one. The error message went on to say: "The 2007 Microsoft Office system does not support upgrading from a prerelease version of the 2007 Microsoft Office system. You must first uninstall any prerelease versions of the 2007 Microsoft Office system products and associated technologies." Fun.
• A few other bloggers out there seemed to have a similar problem and identified 30120000-00B2-0409-0000-0000000FF1CE as the Compatibility pack for the 2007 Office System. M'kay, so I uninstalled it the normal way (early versions were based on beta software and I'd had it installed for ages so this was a likely trouble-maker). Reinstall, no luck, same error message. Running this: MsiExec.exe /X{30120000-00B2-0409-0000-0000000FF1CE } also indicated this thing wasn't installed.
• A few bits of info also suggested investigating HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall so I peeked in there at the 30120000-00B2-0409-0000-0000000FF1CE key and it was identified as Office 2007 Add-in - Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS (Beta). Eureka! Sort of. I uninstalled this in the normal way, re-ran setup, but still no luck--same error message.
• I finally tried MsiExec.exe /x {30120000-00B2-0409-0000-0000000FF1CE} and this time it had some positive feedback.

And the VS 2008 install finally worked! It was even quick about it!