Installing .NET 3.0 and Orcas... (or perhaps call it) An Ordinary Saturday in a Programmers' Life
Note of warning - don't follow the steps I did. Better make sure you install things in the right order. Have a quick look down at the end where I have a "Lessons Learned" :p
The Logbook
It's Saturday morning and I'm about to install .NET 3.0 and Orcas and whateverelse I might need to get a proper 3.0 platform up and running on a WinXP VPC. It's 11am and I won't be sitting in front of the box all day to do this because I got loads of other stuff to do. The plan is to uninstall a few old things, then do something else, then download one part, install it and do something else and keep doing this until thing seem ok. Goal is to have a decent WinXP + .NET 3.0 + Orcas install to play around with by the end of the day :)
11:00am - Need a new VPC machine to install things on, so I start by taking a copy of my (almost) vanilla WinXP SP2 VPC file I always keep handy.
11:30am - Phew! That took a while to copy... I'm in there now, uninstalling a few old things I no longer need. I noticed I copied the wrong VPC file so I got a few old WinFX things I need to remove.
11:55am - All done, downloading the SDK setup file... BTW, Nicholas Allen got a page where he lists things you need to install: http://blogs.msdn.com/drnick/archive/2006/11/07/v1-rtm-downloads.aspx
12:10pm After reading up on some things, I started the install of "Microsoft® Windows® Software Development Kit for Windows Vista™ and .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components". It complains that I still got a few old things I should remove (FxCop etc.) and retry install. That's a good one Microsoft. Thanks. Uninstalling and retrying... this install is downloading during installation, so it might take a while. I'm off to do something else while that is running... BTW. The full install requires some 2.3 GB of disk space.
12:18pm BANG! Installation bombed. It crashed during the FxCop installation it seems. I wanted to read about the error, but when the "report to ms" dialog was done, it closed the installation dialogs... I guess I should restart XP and restart the installation again... gah!
12:25pm It says I must first install the old version... here goes. What old version? Taking a look at the installed programs and uninstalling whatever seems to be related to any SDKs...
12:40pm Ngggh... still refusing to install. Uninstalling even more and trying again. Lessons learned - start out with a very, very fresh XP + VS.NET 2005 box. Kids, don't try this on your daddy's machine at home. I think I'm off to cut my hair and have something to eat.
15:30pm Right, I'm back. I've unistalled everything I think is remotely related to the old WinFX stuff, and also let WinXP finish installing a few updates it had on queue... took a while it did. Starting a new install of .NET 3.0 SDK again. Next, next, next, next... BANG! My whole VPC now crashed as the installer was about to start doing its real work. Jeeeez... what is this?
15:35pm Starting VPC again and we'll see if the install works better this time. Wow... it's actually looking good now.
16:20pm Still installing...
16:25pm Done! Now on to the next install, Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP, starting now...
16:55pm I'm back. Had something to eat. Right, installing the Orcas stuff didn't work, because it needs the .NET 3.0 runtime stuff on the machine... Weird, because one would think it got installed with the SDK... whatever, installing the runtime now. Seems that I didn't read right stuff :D
17:55pm This is your host this evening, back from driving my daughter to a street dance show she's in. The runtime is installed and I'm back in track again - time to install the WCF/WPF extensions... why does the task "merging of the help collections" give me the chills? Because "merging of the help collections might take some time"...
18:15pm Everything looks fine, now installing the Workflow extensions... Why does all these installation look different? Seems like every team at Microsoft is using their own installer and tools for making these packages? One would think that there were some kind of guidelines that they should try and use the same templates. Anyway, as long as it works I'm happy.
19:15pm Took a break. Workflow Foundation extensions seems to be installed OK, time to fire up VS.NET and see if it works :p
(a few minutes later) It works!! Yay! I need a drink...
Lessons learned:
a) Make sure you got a few hours of spare time... ;)
b) Try to have an as clean as possible machine from start - WinXP SP2 and VS.NET 2005, that's all. Use a virtual machine if possible, don't mess up the box you're working on every day.
c) Remove anything even remotely related to older .NET 3.0 / WinFX installations.
d) Install things in this order:
1. Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package
2. Microsoft® Windows® Software Development Kit for Windows Vista™ and .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components
3. Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP
4. Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows Workflow Foundation)
e) Voilá, you're (hopefully) done, start making your first WPF app or something already!