Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Beta has been released!

We just released a beta of the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.  There are several different releases associated with this and the download pages for each one is listed below:

· Visual Studio English:  https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=CF99C752-1391-4BC3-BABC-86BC0B9E8E5A&displaylang=en

· Net Framework:  https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8C36ACA4-E947-4760-9B05-93CAC04C6F87&displaylang=en

· Visual Studio Express English:  https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BDB6391C-05CA-4036-9154-6DF4F6DEBD14&displaylang=en

· Team Foundation Server:  https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DCB535BE-C32E-474C-9F64-282A2849ACC5&displaylang=en

In addition to the main Visual Studio products, we are also releasing beta service pack releases for the Integrated Shell and Isolated Shell.

 Integrated Shell - https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=945c2c2b-3dae-460d-8c6d-09b5a3c40f0a&DisplayLang=en

Isolated Shell - https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fd340c29-2ef8-4984-96ed-f42e441223fd&DisplayLang=en

The integrated shell is a subset of the main Visual Studio patch and only targets the Integrated Shell.  If you have any edition of Visual Studio Standard and above, and also have the Integrated Shell installed, you should only install the main Visual Studio patch.  If you don't have any Visual Studio 2008 editions installed and just have the integrated shell, install the integrated shell patch and save yourself about 60 extra megabytes.

The Isolated Shell release is a major upgrade.  It will uninstall the previous RTM version and install the latest Isolated Shell Beta on your machine.  That means it's not a patch but a full version of the Isolated Shell.

For those who worked with the Integrated and Isolated shells back in November, you'll notice a significant size reduction in the redists.  The main size reduction knocking out about 150 megabytes is the .NET Framework redist.  Instead of carrying the entire payload, we're carrying a small bootstrapper that will go and download the Framework if you don't have it on your machine.  If you do, it just by passes that part of the install and moves onto installing the other pieces.

All these installs will not affect previous version of Visual Studio so if you have Visual Studio 2002, 2003, or 2005, it is safe to apply these patches to your Visual Studio 2008 install.

Please give the patches a try if you have Visual Studio 2008 and send us feedback if you run into any problems.