Essential steps for a successful conversion of a web application with VS 2005

After so much bitterness it's time for me to join the camp of the happy adopters of VS 2005 (it doesn't mean I swallowed the pill anyway and I keep my right to rant if something goes wrong)

But finally most of current .Net web projects (about 57 !) are all happy campers under VS 2005. It has been a long and painful moment, but I manage to clear my way of all the hurdles of the migration path.

So few things I learned from my own experience:

- Use the latest migration DLL (see Scott Guthrie's post to download them).
- Don't think that the migration wizard is a kind of Harry Potter! No magic there so assume to have some manual work to do.
- It seems to be mandatory, at least with the Beta 2,  to install all the tools on a CLEAN machine. I have a couple of free PCs around me so I am quite lucky, but I recommend absolutly to have a virigin Windows before installing the whole bunch. I am not yet totally sure about the why, but I can tell for sure that the migration doesn't work at all if all the DLLs messed up with some other tools. So I recommend to no having .Net 1.1 on the same machine (strange but it works much better with one framework only)
- Of course don't forget to install SQL 2005 first before Visual Studio 2005 if you don't want to lose more hair.
- Now if you have followed all the instructions,be patient (the installation process is TOO LONG!) time for some brainstorming. You need of course to keep a backup of your precious files out of the magic box. Then you need to think about the construction of your web application under VS 2003.
Example: I have a solution with 5 projects. One project is the main web application, the others referenced to some other projects elsewhere in your original machine.
- Copy all the files required for the conversion, don't bother to remove the Excluded files, it seems that the migration wizard manage them after all (but it doesn't exclude them in the Beta 2)
- For a successful conversion, if your web application has multiple projects, convert the solution not the projects.
- IMPORTANT! On your new machine create all the Virtual Directories you need before anything else, otherwise welcome to the broken heart club
- Then wherever you copy all your files edit your Solution file (.sln) with Notepad and check that all the paths (virtual or local) are correct and that you have all the projects required in your machine.
- Open VS 2005 and your Solution file, the migration wizard will fire, then you don't have to ask for a backup*, and voila! Finally your application should be converted with all the projects nested as before in VS 2003.

* Regarding the Backup option, well this were I got many problems because the backup folder is created under your Virtual Directory. So when you run your web project, you will have surely a lot of errors due to the duplication of the web config. It could be nice to see the backup by default out of the web root.

On the last point: this is omething I don't really understand, because I was ranting recently about the lack of web projects in VS 2005. But this is indeed what I wanted. My different projects are now exactly as they were in the previous version. So now I feel confused about all the fuss around this recently.
Hope this will help somebody.

Oh and last thing .NET 2.0 IS really FAST, yes really. I know it's only on my local PC, but I am loving it ;-)