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No love installing Visual Studio SP1

I decided I'd give the SP1 install a shot Friday night, before leaving for Christmas activities. Boy was that a waste of time. First try, there wasn't enough space on the drive, which happens to be a Parallels virtual drive on my Mac. So I fattened it up with about five gigs to spare, and no love. Got the ever popular and incredibly useful error 2908. You know, the 2908! Duh! It was completely hosed after that, and I couldn't even start VS.

I was pretty annoyed. It took about an hour just to get that far. Seriously, how does this stuff ever get out of QA like this? Thank God this wasn't a consumer product, or everyone would have another excuse to start slamming Microsoft again.

Fortunately, being a Mac user with Parallels, I backed up the machine before starting and just started over. Same problem on second attempt, but I tried. The stuff I could Google was all from the initial launch of the product, and a lot of explanations that offered no real solutions.

So there are two things that suck about the installation experience (aside from the fact it simply doesn't work). The first is that you need lots of free disk space, and the installer doesn't bother to check it before doing its thing. Someone should be fired for that. The second problem is the absolutely useless error code. I've yet to encounter anything on the Mac that doesn't tell me why something is wrong when it breaks, but you get nonsense like this all over Windows.

This was very much the moment that I realized just how screwed up Windows really is. I've read some good explanations about why the SP takes so long to install, but the bigger picture issue is that most problems are related to the Windows architecture that Microsoft can't let go of. .NET itself is fabulous, but VS still has too many hooks to the OS, not the least of which is the damn registry, apparently.

I don't know what I'm going to do at this point. I don't really have time to keep fighting the OS. My MSDN incidents expired. I guess I'm going to go on un-SP'd. This does not inspire a lot of confidence at work either, where we were hoping to get some of the reported performance gains.

Posted: Dec 26 2006, 01:39 PM by Jeff | with 14 comment(s)
Filed under: , ,

Comments

Ted Jardine said:

I agree with much of your sentiment: no warning about disk space and an esoteric 2908 error?!? After several tries myself (one all-nighter), I moved the exe to a secondary drive and ran it with patch cache disabled (http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2006/12/19/things-i-wish-i-d-known-before-i-installed-vs-2005-service-pack-1.aspx) and I'm all good to go.

# December 26, 2006 3:16 PM

Jon Galloway said:

Have you looked at the verbose error log to see exactly what's failing (http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2004/11/10/255346.aspx)?

Heath Stewart wrote about how to cut down the disk I/O (including registry access, I belive). Here's my link with a tiny amount of value add:

http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2006/12/19/things-i-wish-i-d-known-before-i-installed-vs-2005-service-pack-1.aspx

That said, I agree with the fundamental issues you're talking about. .NET is great, but it's running on top of an operating system that's based on COM and the registry. Visual Studio is based on InterDev, and from all the registry settings it looks like there's a lot of lava flow architecture there. Don't get me started on MSI - why is it that simple NSIS and Inno setup installs always seem to work better than MSI's with default settings?

Here's an interesting thought: Mono and MonoDevelop continue to improve. They leverage .NET and don't carry the COM legacy baggage. If Microsoft doesn't aggressively refactor Windows and Visual Studio to replace COM with .NET, it may have a hard time keeping up with less encumbered competition.

# December 26, 2006 3:22 PM

Jeff said:

I could pour through logs... but why should I have to? Is it too much to ask that a $1,500+ product work when I install it?

It's SO frustrating when you see something so useful turn into something that is completely useless, especially when you're a big fan boy like me.

# December 26, 2006 3:44 PM

John said:

Same problem here I really have no idea who tested this product when it was in beta but it seems nobody tested it at all. I can't actually even believe that installing a dumb service pack is such a hell to go through. At this point I've also abandonned the SP1 installation as per the same error code and left the update to another century.  

# December 26, 2006 4:23 PM

CumpsD said:

I have a somewhat similar experience, where it feels like every newer version of Visual Studio seems to be less responsive when working with it.

For some reason, trying to add a reference to something suddenly requires VS to take ages to load the reference dialog.

Strange auto-collapse behaviour from the toolbox, data, solution explorer, output, etc... panes.

It just "feels" slower. And it sure isn't the hardware :)

I'm preparing at the moment to go to a dual boot setup to run in Linux and take a serious look at Mono and the effort/productivity it takes to develop for it and in Linux. Curious :)

# December 26, 2006 7:41 PM

foobar said:

Most installations/upgrades are not nearly as painful as this.  I'm curious to know which IDEs you've used on the Mac that were easier to upgrade though.

# December 26, 2006 10:50 PM

Jeff said:

It has nothing to do with IDE's. This is par for the course on all kinds of non-trivial Windows software, and even Windows itself.

# December 26, 2006 11:42 PM

drew said:

I wish I had seen this site b4 trying to SP-up.

# January 8, 2007 4:18 PM

Bruce Chapman said:

Well, I've tried installing it, but it just won't install because I don't have enough disk space.  I actually do have enough disk space, but because I have installed Visual Studio onto a D: drive instead of C:, I can't actually tell the installer to look at D: instead of C:.  I can't be the only one in this boat, and I really feel they need to have another go at this.  All I want to say is 'install onto the D: drive', but the installer just isn't listening.  (Unless someone has a suggestion for me??)

# January 25, 2007 1:38 AM

Jerry van de Beek said:

Hello fellow developers,

It's making me crazy this week!!

I'am spending for more than 30 hours to get SP1 installed on my development machine.

Finally I removed everything (SQL 2005, Visual Studio, .NET Framework etc.)

Cleared the registry, removed the Visual Studio related plugin's.

Installed a new version of Visual Studio and try to install the SP1.

It won't seem to help, may be you guys have a suggestion.

The errorlog is below.

Thanks in advance for your tips/suggestions.

Jerry

=== Verbose logging started: 1/31/2007  12:19:31  Build type: SHIP UNICODE 3.01.4000.2435  Calling process: C:\WINDOWS\system32\msiexec.exe ===

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:19:31:640]: Resetting cached policy values

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:19:31:640]: Machine policy value 'Debug' is 0

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:19:31:640]: ******* RunEngine:

          ******* Product: {D407F7C0-579E-4CCB-91FD-855CE5084E86}

          ******* Action:

          ******* CommandLine: **********

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:19:31:656]: Machine policy value 'DisableUserInstalls' is 0

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:19:32:500]: Cloaking enabled.

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:19:32:500]: Attempting to enable all disabled priveleges before calling Install on Server

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:19:32:531]: End dialog not enabled

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:19:32:531]: Original package ==> C:\WINDOWS\Installer\c805a2.msi

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:19:32:531]: Package we're running from ==> C:\WINDOWS\Installer\c805a2.msi

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:19:32:875]: APPCOMPAT: looking for appcompat database entry with ProductCode '{D407F7C0-579E-4CCB-91FD-855CE5084E86}'.

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:19:32:906]: APPCOMPAT: no matching ProductCode found in database.

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:19:33:031]: MSCOREE not loaded loading copy from system32

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:21:38:000]: Original patch ==> C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\ZNW949\VS80sp1-KB926601-X86-ENU.msp

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:21:38:000]: Patch we're running from ==> C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\ecf477.msp

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:046]: Machine policy value 'AllowLockdownBrowse' is 0

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:046]: Machine policy value 'DisableBrowse' is 0

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:046]: Couldn't find local patch ''. Looking for it at its source.

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:046]: Resolving Patch source.

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:062]: User policy value 'SearchOrder' is 'nmu'

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:093]: User policy value 'DisableMedia' is 0

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:093]: Machine policy value 'AllowLockdownMedia' is 0

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:093]: SOURCEMGMT: Media enabled only if package is safe.

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:093]: SOURCEMGMT: Looking for sourcelist for product {D93F9C7C-AB57-44C8-BAD6-1494674BCAF7}

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:093]: SOURCEMGMT: Adding {D93F9C7C-AB57-44C8-BAD6-1494674BCAF7}; to potential sourcelist list (pcode;disk;relpath).

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:125]: SOURCEMGMT: Now checking product {D93F9C7C-AB57-44C8-BAD6-1494674BCAF7}

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:125]: SOURCEMGMT: Media is enabled for product.

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:125]: SOURCEMGMT: Attempting to use LastUsedSource from source list.

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:140]: SOURCEMGMT: Trying source C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\ZNW4EE\.

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:203]: Note: 1: 2203 2: C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\ZNW4EE\VS80sp1-KB926601-X86-ENU.msp 3: -2147287037

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:218]: SOURCEMGMT: Source is invalid due to missing/inaccessible package.

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:218]: Note: 1: 1706 2: -2147483647 3: VS80sp1-KB926601-X86-ENU.msp

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:218]: SOURCEMGMT: Processing net source list.

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:218]: Note: 1: 1706 2: -2147483647 3: VS80sp1-KB926601-X86-ENU.msp

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:218]: SOURCEMGMT: Processing media source list.

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:06:468]: SOURCEMGMT: Resolved source to: 'VS80sp1-KB926601-X86-ENU.msp'

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:07:046]: Note: 1: 1314 2: VS80sp1-KB926601-X86-ENU.msp

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:07:046]: Unable to create a temp copy of patch 'VS80sp1-KB926601-X86-ENU.msp'.

This patch package could not be opened.  Verify that the patch package exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer patch package.

C:\WINDOWS\Installer\c805a2.msi

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:07:093]: Note: 1: 1708

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:07:093]: Note: 1: 2729

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:07:140]: Note: 1: 2729

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:07:140]: Product: Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition - ENU -- Installation failed.

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:07:265]: Attempting to delete file C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\ecf477.msp

MSI (c) (F0:C0) [12:22:07:328]: MainEngineThread is returning 1635

=== Verbose logging stopped: 1/31/2007  12:22:07 ===

# January 31, 2007 6:31 AM

Harvey The Rabbit said:

For those of the humorous sort, I've written an updated install guide:

http://waxingcatatonic.blogspot.com/2007/03/real-guide-to-visual-studio-2005-sp1.html

:)

# March 14, 2007 2:16 PM

Vamsy said:

Same happened with me too... Looks like this crap is taking more that 300 MB of memory and gets stuck after waiting for 4 hrs. Its time MS gives us a break and provides with a professional installation tool.

# October 28, 2007 10:04 AM

Vincent said:

Microsoft screwed up big time on this one.  The forums are filled with people complaining about SP1 installation problems.  I have been a microsoft developper for about 15 years, but a few months ago I have switched to ubuntu linux as my main desktop environnement and I can tell you that it was the best move I ever made.  I still have to go back into windows once in a while to use VS2010, but now this latest SP destroyed my installation, so I'm left wondering if I should make the effort of unistalling everything and reinstalling in hope it will work, or just port my application to some other technology where I wouldn't need to use windows.  It's sad because .Net is a great platform, but on a bad OS.  

# May 23, 2011 11:27 AM

Jeff said:

Whatever. You're responding to a post that's five years old.

# May 23, 2011 11:46 AM
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