Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (release) now available

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"In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from." -- Peter Drucker

Here is a page with a bunch of related stuff, including a prep tool that will set you up in cases where you had a beta Service Pack installed:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/Results.aspx?DisplayLang=en&nr=50&startDate=7/12/2008&period=30&sortCriteria=date 

The actual Service Pack link is about the 10th one down in the list, here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=27673c47-b3b5-4c67-bd99-84e525b5ce61&DisplayLang=en

I use UltraISO to extract this to the file system, and then you can just execute the "SPInstaller.exe" to start the install. A lot easier than burning a DVD. You can also mount the ISO using the VCD Control Tool or a similar utility such as Daemon Tools. But don’t forget if you ever need to do update or repair, you need to do so from Control Panel , not from the original install source for VS 2008 – and it will be looking for a drive letter and location. If you have space, I believe its better just to keep folders containing the Visual Studio 2008 and the Service Pack media on your hard drive.

There is also  a new Silverlight_Chainer.exe installer for Silverlight 2 Beta 2 that plays well with the new release VS Service Pack.  If you see a date of 8/11/2008 on this page:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=50A9EC01-267B-4521-B7D7-C0DBA8866434&displaylang=en (86461KB) File version: 9.0.30729.10
This checks SP1 RTM patches...
And installs:
                       KB950630
      VS90SP1-   KB955214

-=- that's the new one!   Oh, and lest I forget, here’s the Readme:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/2/8/A2807F78-C861-4B66-9B31-9205C3F22252/VS2008SP1Readme.htm

So far, I have all this successfully installed on 2 machines running Vista, including one x64.

Here is a direct download link to the MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (2209MB):

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/f/0/1f07c259-7ff2-4902-9205-ad1dfb87ccab/VS2008SP1MSDNENUX1506188.iso

If you want to install VS2008 SP1 (release) and still work with Silverlight 2 applications, download the updated Silverlight tools and install this after you install VS208 SP1.

I have also installed SQL Server 2008 as an upgrade to SQL Server 2005 on a 64-bit Vista OS wtith no issues to report. Other machines follow, with updates to this post as appropriate.

NOTE: if you are having issues around Silverlight, read Heath's post.

There is one additional issue that happened to me with a third PC: If you get errors during Service Pack 1 installation such as “unable to load package xx1234.msi” this is a patch problem. The first thing to try is the Download the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Registration Correction Tool package:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0BA6038C-061E-4B4A-9BE9-96A323701260

 

If this doesn’t work (and it didn’t for me) the next step would be to UNINSTALL Visual Studio 2008 and reinstall it fresh, then apply the Service Pack.

The fastest way to uninstall Visual Studio when all else fails:

An easy, reliable and very fast way to uninstall VS 2008 without having to wait an hour or more for the standard operations  is to use the Microsoft Windows Installer Cleanup Utility:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301/en-us (download is midway down the page).

If you haven’t used it before, this presents you with a list of all software installations on your machine. You can select Visual Studio 2008 (any version), click the “REMOVE” button, and all registry entries pertaining to Visual Studio will be removed. If you want you can also delete the folder in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0 but I suspect that won’t be necessary because when you install it again everything will be written over anyway. The installer will now think that VS2008 has never been installed before! Files don't really matter -- it's what's in the Registry that counts.

One final note:

Don't forget to temporarily disable your antivirus software while you are doing all this "stuff". I had F-Secure pop up an "access denial" on one file during my travels. You don't want that to happen when everything is 95% complete...

Have fun and don't forget to RTFM  on the readme file, before you jump in with both feet.

Some Interesting Silverlight Stats

According to Eweek, during the first week of the Beijing Olympics:

  • Silverlight was downloaded 8 million times per day
  • 13.5 million video streams active
  • 16.9 million users of the site
  • On August 11th Silverlight delivered 250Terabytes of data

I can remember a couple of times when the Silverlight "loading" thingies were spinning and no video got delivered, but that's still some pretty impressive numbers.

Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

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