Visual Studio 2005 beta will not install on Windows Server 2003 Small Business Server
I am not sure how many people out there are running Windows Server 2003 Small Business Server and trying to install and use Visual Studio 2005 beta 2, but I wanted to let you know about this issue just in case. There is a bug in setup for Visual Studio 2005 beta 2 (and also in beta 1 and any CTPs that shipped in the meantime) that prevents VS from installing correctly on Windows Server 2003 Small Business Server. If you try to run setup, it will initialize the setup UI and then inform you that "A failed installation has been detected. Press OK to uninstall the product. Then retry installing."
Pressing OK and allowing setup to try to clean-up the failed installation will not allow install to succeed. This bug has been fixed in later builds and will install correctly on this OS when it ships.
In the meantime, you can workaround this issue by doing the following:
- Launch regedit.exe
- Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Integration
- Rename the entire Microsoft Integration sub-key
- Close regedit.exe and re-run Visual Studio 2005 setup