Sysinternals, Web searching, and Win Fx February CTP (or January CTP or something else)
This morning I installed WinFx February CTP in the recommended order (Runtime, Win SDK, VS Extensions) and everything went smoothly. This afternoon, I used VS 2005 in a customer project (you know, the ones you're actually paid for doing) and something funny happened: when I tried to add a web reference in a pretty standard project I got this message Some of the files required for Web references are not installed. I blinked, tried again (I know, I know, totally silly but old habits die hard), and again... as usual, no miracle happened so I started to mumble something about idiots installing CTPs in their development machines but then I remembered the Web, I searched for "Some of the files required for Web references are not installed." and I got a few pointers, one of them gave a list of files that should exist and I was about checking when I read another pearl:
Yes, some file is missing so I recommend you:
- Start Sysinternals Filemon
- Repeat the operation that failed
- See what files weren't found in Filemon screen
So I did and lo and behold D:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\Packages\1033\wsdl.xsl wasn't there, may be the WinFx installation deleted it (or the January CTP uninstall), may be (as Joel likes saying) some cosmic rays hit my hard drive, I don't know, I just copied the file from a machine nearby and, after only 5 minutes, I was up and running again, long live Sysinternals! long live the Web! and above all long live the guy that wrote that entry!
PS. While writing this blog I found (another Web search) that Filemon has saved many people already, this just proves that I'm not as above the average idiot early adopter as I thought.