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Author Topic: solutions to downloading and installing Visual Basic  (Read 4286 times)

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solutions to downloading and installing Visual Basic
« on: January 31, 2009, 07:06:53 AM »
The installation process for Visual Basic Studio 2008 on Windows XP has much to be desired. I struggled for days to get around the bugs and google didn't have any solutions. But hey its Microsoft so nothing unexpected :P

Anyway, I finally managed to get it to work and wanted to post this on the web for others who might have the same problem. Hopefully this will save you time!


Step 1: Before even bothering installing Visual Basic, you need to install the .NET Framework. Of course it comes with the Visual Basic installer, but it'll just hang for hours and not actually install if you try. Instead go to Windows Update and install the 248.4mb .NET Framework from there. It'll take a few hours to download . . . then restart your computer (it won't work if you don't). It even adds itself to the Firefox browser without permission - interesting!

Step 2: Download the 2.6mb special Visual Basic installer. It will then connect to Microsoft and slowly download an additional 77mb. It'll also give you the option to download SQL and Silverlight stuff, don't check those boxes unless you really want those. Its irrelevant for robotics.

Step 3: Install. Oh and don't click 'Yes, send information about my setup experiences to Microsoft Corporation.' It'll just crash when it tries to report an error.

Step 4: During installation it will immediately give a "setup is looking for file vcredist_x86.exe" error and refuse to continue from there. Cancel the installation, allow it to save an installation shortcut to your desktop, then restart the installation using the shortcut. The error won't appear again.

Step 5: Your installation is complete. If you don't plan to use SQL, uninstall it through Add/Remove. It wastes half a gig or more of your harddrive and isn't useful for robotics programming.


Other notes:
This is where the installer places the installation files. But installing individual programs is not allowed unless you use the main install shortcut.
C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Temp\30729.01\1033\wcu

And for the many other Visual Basic install bugs you might encounter:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/a/e/9ae0f6cc-7032-408e-9ca7-989f9e4af4ec/VS2008Readme.htm

 


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