Updated cleanup tool that fixes package load failures in VS 2005 beta 2

I've posted an updated version of the VS 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0 cleanup tool that will fix Package Load Failure error dialogs that might occur after uninstalling VS 2005 beta 1 or any of the Community Tech Preview (CTP) versions and then installing VS 2005.

You can click on this link to download the latest version of the VS 2005 beta cleanup tool.

 

Post-cleanup steps

One of the steps performed by this version of the cleanup tool removes some of the native images generated for VS 2005 beta 2. These native images are used to improve the startup time when you launch the VS IDE. You can regenerate these native images by running the following from a cmd prompt:

  • %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50215\ngen.exe update /queue

If you are using VS 2005 beta 2 for web development on a local IIS server, you may see that ASP.NET 2.0 extensions for IIS are missing. In order to resolve this, run the following from a cmd prompt after running the cleanup tool:

  • %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50215\aspnet_regiis.exe -i

If the cleanup tool doesn't work for you

The cleanup tool has been tested by several people inside of Microsoft who had been receiving errors when trying to use the VS 2005 beta 2 IDE. However, I'm still not certain that it will correctly clean up 100% of machines that have previously had beta 1 or a CTP installed. If you try to run the tool and still encounter errors while using VS 2005 beta 2, please try to gather the following data and post a comment on my blog or contact me directly and we will take a look:

  1. Run %programfiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe /log
  2. Gather the file \Documents and Settings\<your_username>\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\ActivityLog.xml for us to look at

Why do these errors happen?

If you are interested, I described the root causes of why certain uninstall/reinstall scenarios will encounter these problems in this blog post.