Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2

Although you've probably heard about this elsewhere by now, I figured I'd add my own post to the mix. You can now download Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 from the MSDN Subscriber Downloads site. The following ISO images are available:

  • Visual SourceSafe 2005 Beta 2 (English) - 172.97 MB
  • Visual Studio 2005 Standard Beta 2 (English) - 2.85 GB
  • Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition Test Load Agent Beta 2 (English) - 144.75 MB
  • Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Beta 2 (English) - 273.15 MB
  • Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite Beta 2 (English) - 3.75 GB

If you're interested in deploying an application built with Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2, you'll want to read about the Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 Go-Live License. Also, many of the whitepapers at MSDN have been updated for Beta 2, so be sure to check out all of the updated content.

If you have installed previous versions of Visual Studio 2005, such as Beta 1 or Community Technical Preview (CTP) builds of Visual Studio Team Suite, Visual Studio Standard or Visual Studio Professional, then you must uninstall the pre-Beta2 components in the exact order below before beginning to install any version of Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2. I ran into the exact issues described in the Notes section below, so don't be surprised if you hit them too.

  1. Go to the Control Panel and launch Add/Remove Programs
  2. Remove "Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional" or other related IDE installs such as (Visual Studio Professional/Standard/Enterprise Architect/Team Suite, etc.)
  3. Remove "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition"
  4. Remove "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Tools Express Edition"
  5. Remove "Microsoft SQL Native Client"
  6. Remove "Microsoft Visual Studio 64bit Prerequisites Beta"
  7. Remove "Microsoft MSDN Express Library 2005 Beta"
  8. Remove "Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office System 2005 Runtime Beta"
  9. Remove "Microsoft Device Emulator 1.0 Beta"
  10. Remove "Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0 Beta"
  11. Remove "Microsoft SQL Mobile 2005 Development Tools"
  12. Remove "Microsoft Visual J# Redistributable Package 2.0 Beta". If you receive an error message, see Note 1.
  13. Remove "Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Beta". If you receive an error message, see Note 2

Notes:

  1. If you see an error removing J# .NET Redistributable Package 2.0 from Add/Remove Programs, please run "msiexec /x {9046F10C-F5E7-4871-BED9-8288F19C70DF}" from a command line window
  2. If you see an error removing .NET Framework 2.0 from Add/Remove Programs, please run "msiexec /x {71F8EFBF-09AF-418D-91F1-52707CDFA274}" from a command line window