Document Explorer 2005 setup fails with a 1935 or 2908 error

A while ago, I posted an item regarding a possible cause and resolution for 1935 or 2908 errors during Visual Studio 2005 setup. Since then, I have heard from several customers who have run into similar issues during Document Explorer 2005 setup.

After thinking through these scenarios in more detail, I realized that it is more likely that Document Explorer 2005 setup will fail with a 1935 error than it is that Visual Studio 2005 setup will fail with a 1935 error because Document Explorer is installed as a prerequisite before setup ever tries to install Visual Studio. Therefore, if the .NET Framework is in a bad state (which is generally the cause of these 1935 errors), then the first place it will typically be seen is in Document Explorer setup because that setup package needs to be able to install assemblies to the GAC and requires a functional .NET Framework 2.0 installation on the system to be able to do so. If Document Explorer setup fails, Visual Studio setup will not even be attempted.

Even though this is a bit of duplication from my previous post, I want to list the steps that can be used to workaround this issue with Document Explorer setup in case folks run into this issue.

Issue

When Document Explorer 2005 setup tries to install assemblies to the GAC, it may fail because the .NET Framework 2.0 is not correctly installed on the system. In the cases I have seen where this has happened to customers, the underlying problem was that setup detected that the .NET Framework 2.0 was already installed and skipped that prerequisite step. However, the machine did not actually have the .NET Framework 2.0 installed, but instead only had the registry key that setup uses to detect whether or not the .NET Framework 2.0 is installed.

Workaround

I found that the machines had the following orphaned registry key/value that setup uses to determine that .NET Framework 2.0 was already installed:

  • Key name: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v2.0.50727
  • Value name: MSI
  • Data type: REG_DWORD
  • Value data: 1

In the cases I have seen, the customers deleted this key/value and re-ran Visual Studio 2005 setup, and setup correctly detected that it needed to install the .NET Framework 2.0, and after installing that, Document Explorer 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 setup worked perfectly.

Note - if the above workaround does not help, I would suggest taking a look at the Document Explorer 2005 troubleshooting tips that I previously posted.