Chris Szurgot's Blog

Ok, so I've gotten VS 2005 Beta 2 working, I'm ready to start transitioning our web site and products to it, and I'm starting to think about licensing. (MSDN subscription expires over the summer) I'd like to work with Team Systems, but that pricing is somewhat prohibitive, so I'm wondering if I just stick with VS 2005 Professional, what level of MSDN do I need to get VSS, and how much will it cost stand-alone.

And I know that I could just get Universal today, and transition up, but we may be expanding our developer base next year, so I've got to factor in those costs as well....

This is not to say that we won't go with Team Systems, but I've got to weigh all the options.

After 2 repaves, several Ghost restores, several attempts to install VS 2005 Beta 2, I finally got my machine into a good state where everything is installed. Yeah! For some reason, on my first repave, I could not get SQL Express to install... The only difference I can see is that the first one was connected to my domain, whereas I just left the second one without the domain. Ugh!

I did a redownload because I was getting CRC errors on a couple of files, but that didn't help. I tried to install SQL first, but that didn't help. So I rebuilt the machine without the domain, did a Ghost backup, and installed it with no problems... Now comes the task (hopefully enjoyable) of migrating our web site to ASP.NET beta 2 while still maintaining a few client apps in .NET 1.1... This could be fun!

Yesterday, I (half) jokingly asked where the torrent for the download of Visual Studio 2005 is. Today, after about 12 hours of downloading, with one "Interrupted" download, two Burned DVDs, and about four attempts to install (it will not install SQL Express 2005 :( One of the files seems to have a CRC mismatch ) I can safely request some enhancements to the Download Manager.

The first wouldn't even be an enhancement to the download manager itself, but a CRC check tool to make sure the download is good.

The second would be that the download manager could ensure the integrity of the file as it comes across, and correct errors if it detects them.

With these GB, and multi GB downloads, it's really necessary to avoid lengthy wasted downloads. I'm reattempting my download now to make sure the ISO isn't corrupt (which is my first guess because nobody else is screaming about failed installs...)

Notes: This is Standard, not Team System. Used Nero and DVDBurn from the Windows XP Resource Kit. Also trying to read the ISO with the Virtual CD Control Panel stuff from MS.

Ok, so VS.NET 2005 Beta 2 is done. And it'll be released next week. (Why not now so we can use all that bandwidth to download over the weekend. <grin>)

But the real question is where is the more efficient downloading scheme for MSDN? This thing will be 3+ GBs, and if it's anything like last time, everybody and his brother will be hitting the MSDN site, so it'll take 3 or 4 days to get it all. Wouldn't it be nice if they used BitTorrent, much like RedHat does with Fedora (http://torrent.dulug.duke.edu/) Add security to the whole thing so no unlicensed user can get it, and let it a good proven method for downloading large files go to work.

That said, I still can't wait to get in the MSDN queue, even if I do have to fuss with it. <grin>

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/05/EnhancedWindowsForms/default.aspx

From the current issue of MSDN. Details a lot of nice stuff about Windows Forms 2.0.

And they added a FormClosing event that details the reason, including WindowsShutDown, so I don't have to kludge together a test for it anymore. Yeah!

Man, where is Beta 2... I can't wait to start really playing and maybe even deploying some stuff. <grin>

I installed Service Pack 1 on my test computer, then installed it live a day later. Everything worked fine, except I have one gripe. (This also applies to .NET upgrades) On two of the machines, I had the ASP.NET State Server running. On both of those machines, it was off after the upgrade, and set to manual, so I had to go in and reset it. I'm all for having things off by default, but if a service is on, it should stay on. The same thing happens with the .NET upgrades (1.1 and 2.0) They should also detect the state of ASP.NET state, and maintain it.

Otherwise, no problems! <grin>

A sad day for the Church. (via CNN)