Updated VS 2005 uninstall instructions for beta 2 and post beta 2 CTPs

Hey all, now that we have released some post beta 2 community tech preview versions of Visual Studio 2005, I've been getting questions about using the cleanup tool that was originally created for removing beta 1 to remove beta 2 instead. The bad news is that the version of the cleanup tool posted at this location will only work correctly for removing things that are left over from VS 2005 beta 1.

The good news is that we're working on an updated version that will work for beta 2 and beyond. An early preview version is already available at this location. This version of the cleanup tool currently only automates the uninstall of the previous beta packages in the order specified in the updated manual uninstall instructions (which can be found in this post on Hong Gao's blog). These steps are essentially the same as the steps published for VS 2005 beta 1, but have been updated to include new components that were not a part of beta 1 or have been renamed since beta 1. Please pay special attention to the order of uninstall. Most of the problems we see migrating from beta to beta come from uninstalling the .NET Framework 2.0 beta build before the other stuff. You need to uninstall the .NET Framework 2.0 beta last.

Stay tuned to my blog and to Hong's blog for updates about the cleanup tool. We're nearly ready to post an updated version of the tool that will identify and repair some of the known problems that we have seen after migrating from one beta/CTP to a newer beta/CTP in addition to automating the uninstall of the various pieces of VS 2005.