2011.2 install screws up VS 2010 SP1?

I can't think of anything that our installer would do that would affect VS. It's pretty much exactly the same as all past installers, with one change. We actually did less VS integration since before for installing item templates, we would have to tell VS to run with it's /setup command to register them (because we installed them to the program files folder). Now we just copy them to your my documents folder instead and we don't even call that other method any more. This makes the install many times faster as the /setup call was a choke point in the past. So at this point all our installer does is copy things over and run the same toolbox installer we've run for years.

Yes, I noticed it was much faster... except for the VS 2010 SP1 reapply :). I guess we'll see if others have this problem as people upgrade. Too late for me, just mentioning it.

I got the same problem. Everything is screw up by this #!%?&%$! installation. EVERYTHING !!!
I was unable to uninstall previous Actipro version from the control Panel - programs. I had to try to re-install but only offer to remove.

THEN I try to remove - install - reinstall Actipro 2011.2 but my VS 2010 Ultimate is totally screwed up.

I re-installed VS 2010 (more than 2 hours) and re-install acti-pro and got the same problem !!!


VERY VERY FRUSTRATING !!!!!!!!!!!!!

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I started VS2010 SP1. I removed every references to ActiPro. (Note that I got errors in every dialog designer about : "System.IO.FileNotFoundException - Microsoft.Practices.Composite.Presentation"
I re-installed Actipro again (in fact: uninstall - install - uninstall - install).
I re-started Visual studio, I added some controls and everything looks fine now.

[Modified at 01/11/2012 07:22 AM]

Also, just to mention: I had to get a new license through ActiPro-WebSite account to upgrade ???

Hi Eric,

I'm sorry you ran into trouble. The original poster of this thread and you are the only ones who have reported this sort of issue with VS SP1. We've never run into it here and we all run SP1.

As we explained in our previous reply, our installer hasn't changed in quite some time in anything related to VS. In fact, we reduced the VS-related code in the installer in 2011.2 so there should be less of a chance for any issues than before if anything.

We'd certainly try and sort out what could be causing this. It's rather tricky though since we can't see it ourselves. You mentioned the FileNotFoundException on Microsoft.Practices.Composite.Presentation. That is a Prism 2.2 file. We only have one assembly (ActiproSoftware.Docking.Interop.Prism.Wpf.dll) that references that, but nothing in our designer assemblies should. So if you didn't reference that assembly then nothing from us should be causing that.

SledgeHammer01, do you recall seeing a similar message?

Also can you give us more detail on where you saw the VS saying SP1 needed reinstall? Like when exactly does that show and what was the exact message?

We've done some internet searches on Microsoft's forums for this sort of thing but haven't come up with any results. It would help to have an exact error message to search on.

Yes, any time you change a major/minor version (like from 2011.1 to 2011.2), you do need to use a different license key. You can get the license key from your account.

I already did some search about the bug. The only thing that seems related was that post.

I first try to install 2011.2 over 2011.1 without uninstalling it. I thought everything would be able to live together. I had many errors and don't remember if I was able to open the designer. I fixed some issues but feel that it would have been better to uninstall 2011.1 and fix code to use only 2011.2.
Then I add hard time uninstalling Actipro. It fail when called from control-panel-Programs. I thought it could have been the antivirus (pushed by the company where I'm not suppose to have the control over - ie: McAfea on Vista)... I loose a full day before I try the downloaded installer of 2011.1 directly. I was very angry about actipro !!! I do have reputation to explode quickly but I was really really frustrated ...
I finnaly uninstall both versions. After that, I still add problems in the deisgner that I never had before. I decided myself to re-install VS2010 (repair).
I installed 2011.2. I got the error about "FileNotFoundException on Microsoft.Practices.Composite.Presentation".
I removed every references to actipro in my project. Close VS2010.
I then uninstall - install - uninstall - install 2011.2 (I was doing something else at the same time and uninstalled a second time by mistake).
I started vs2010 and include controls I use in my project manually in a temp dialog (just to ensure to have proper references) - TextBox - Dock (mainly). I fixed some errors and everything was fine.

Sorry I don't have more information just plenty of frustrations that are slowly going away .

Hope you will ever find something. It is related to Actipro for sure but perhaps totally indirectly ???? Who knows ???

Thanks.
Eric

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Thank you for the information.

I would think the dual installs would work ok but it probably isn't something we've looked into for a while. I'll make a note to investigate that scenario to see if we find any designer and uninstall issues when two major versions are installed. If so, that may be something we can tweak to get working better.

We haven't run into issues uninstalling before so perhaps it was the anti-virus software conflicting. But regardless, we'll do some tests to see if we can repro that.

For the SP1 issue, our designer assemblies reference some of the Microsoft VS designer assemblies which are needed to provide such functionality. I don't believe we have specific version set on the references though so it should pick up newer versions there, even if Microsoft did update them in SP1.

If anyone else reading this is running into a similar issue with VS saying it needs SP1 reinstalled, please tell us exactly where/when they see that and what the exact message is for it.