Pre-RTM Visual Studio 2005 Automatic Uninstall Tool

It's highly recommended that you install the RTM version of Visual Studio 2005 on a clean machine.

But...but...we realize a lot of people have installed some pre-release version of Visual Studio 2005, and to that end, the setup team has created our "best effort" for uninstalling the product, which is the (also unsupported) Automatic uninstall tool.

A couple of notes on the uninstaller

  • Do not use this tool if you have installed SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition or higher (SQL Server 2005 Express is okay). Why? Because we don't do ref counting on who is using the Framework and you can get into a situation where the uninstall tool will remove a pre-RTM version of the .NET Framework 2.0, but SQL Server 2005 Workgroup+ will still be installed on the machine. Because Workgroup edition uses managed code, you've now "hosed" your SQL 2005 Workgroup edition uninstall. Check the product readme for step-by-step instructions
  • Do not click "Cancel" when the Automatic uninstall tool is running. Depending on when you click Cancel, it can "hose" your machine uninstall