Trying to install VS2008 Express. NET 3.5 will not install.

[TheVampire]

I'm trying to install Visual Studio 2008 Express on my Win XP Pro machine, SP2 updated. Install keeps bombing on Net 3.5. I tried the online install and it would fail with a "bad_certificate" error. So Downloaded the disk image and burned a DVD. When I run the install from that it fails on the NET 3.5

I tried updating to NET 3.0 first ( I have 2.0 on the machine ) but that also fails. I read online that NET 3.0 would not install if 2.0 was on the machine, so I uninstalled 2.0 and tried again. The net 3.0 install failed and the error log said it was because 2.0 was NOT detected.

I reinstalled 2.0 and now the error log on the 3.0 install says that "Microsoft Communications Foundation" is not installed. I've tried downloading that and then retrying the 3.0 install but no luck and it still says that MCF is NOT installed.

I've seen from various searches that I'm not the only one with this problem. None of the solutions ( when I could find one ) that were listed have worked for me.

Anyone have some suggestions? Thanks.

 

[Qik3Coder]

Make sure that you do not have any other 2008 beta software on your machine.

-Sometimes the answer to your question is the hack that works

 

[TheVampire]

UPDATE: I finally got it to work after about 3 days. Here's what *I* had to do. No guarantees this will work for anyone else with the same problem ( There seems to be as many different ways to fix it as there are people that have the problem )

From what I've read, if you have Beta versions and such on your machine, you should delete them first. I did not have any earlier versions of VS or SQL server 2003 or 2005 on my machine.

1: Uninstall all versions of net framework from Add/remove programs. Reboot

2: Ran the net framework cleanup tool. ( Cleanup_tool.exe.) Looked in Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework and deleted all folders for all net framework versions. A couple of folders still existed even after doing the uninstall and cleanup. Reboot

3: Ran the MSI cleanup tool. ( MSICUU2.exe ) Reboot

4: Ran microsoft update and made sure I had all available patches installed. Reboot

5: Reinstalled NetFramework 1.1 and had to use the command line. <full path to dotnetfx.exe> /t:%temp% /c:"msiexec.exe /fvecms %temp%\netfx.msi"

6: Applied service packs to NET 1.1

7: Installed NET 2.0, and then service pack 1 for 2.0.

8: Installed NET 3.0

9: Installed NET 3.5 directly and NOT from the Visual Studio 2008 setup.

10: Still could not get the DVD I burned to work ( it would fail on the SDK install right off the bat ), so I tried doing the web install and lo and behold it worked. After downloading each component it all installed fine and now I have a running copy of VS 2008 on my machine.

Some usefull information here: support.microsoft.com/kb/923100

Hope this helps someone else!