I had spent a few days on this problem and the paths that I took make it worthwhile to blog! But first, the background...
I basically wanted to install the February CTP of Visual Studio 2005 to try out some new features. I had the December Beta 1 Refresh of VS 2005 and SQL Server 2005 along with the .NET Framework 2.0 Beta. When I uninstalled the existing VS 2005, it worked fine, but after that when I uninstalled the .NET Framework Beta 2.0, the application was immediately removed from Control Panel and I should have suspected this, but did not. Later, when I looked at my folder, I saw the framework directory still there and was puzzled and tried deleting that folder (which was the first mistake). The folder could not be completely deleted and therein started my problem, because, post this, I could neither install the new CTP of VS 2005 or uninstall SQL Server 2005 becuase both of complained that the .NET Framework Beta 2.0 version was incompatible or not present.
I spoke to some folks on how to go about erasing all trails of the framework and initially tried fiddling with the registry, but to no avail. Then, one of my MVP collegues pointed me to his blog. I wish I had seen it earlier, because the methods outlined here assumed that you did not manually remove some files. After some more frustrating moments, I finally landed upon this Microsoft Support Article. Although this article talks about .NET Framework 1.1, the methods outlined apply to 2.0 also. Out of this, the best method that I found (for my initially committed mistakes) was using the MSIZAP utility. This is an utility that you can download from the Windows Installer SDK and it works great. All you have to do is provide the product ID for the product that you want zapped and MSIZAP will remove all trails of it from the registry!!
Post this, things went on fine and I was able to get everything working again. However, now I have a VPC for this as I upped the RAM on my machine and the VPC works great. Nevertheless, remember MSIZAP and the article link and you can get around many framework installation issues.
If you are an ardent VB programmer and are looking for all VB (and VB.NET) related content, MS now has a new Visual Basic Resource Center called
VBRun. You can access it at this location:
VBRun.
If you want to experience SQL Server 2005, but do not have the local means to do so, you now have a great method to test out this product online from Microsoft. With the introduction of the SQL Server labs, you can try out the capabilities of this new system along with guided hands-on labs and notes. Note that you will need to register yourself and post this, can access the labs.
Visit the labs at: SQL Server 2005 Virtual Labs.
Microsoft has released the beta of the MSF for Agile Software Development. MSF for Agile Software Development is a scenario-driven, context-based, agile software development process that utilizes many of the ideas embodied in Team System. This process incorporates proven practices developed at Microsoft around requirements, design, security, performance, and testing. You can download the beta here:
MSF for Agile Software Development.
By now, each one of you must be tired of hearing that SQL Server 2005 hosts the CLR and that you can write various types of objects like procedures, triggers etc in managed code. ADO.NET has been significantly enhanced to keep pace with the changes in SQL Server 2005 capabilities and this article from Pablo Castro This discusses how managed code can use ADO.NET when running inside SQL Server 2005 using the new SQLCLR feature:
Managed Data Access with ADO.NET.