Friday, July 23, 2004
Installing Visual Studio 2005 Beta
One of the goodies waiting for me when I got home from vacation on Monday was Visual Studio 2005 Beta. Yesterday I got around to installing it on my laptop, which runs Windows 2000 Professional. Actually, the install process started on Wednesday. This laptop doesn't have a big drive, so I started the process by uninstalling Visual Studio 2003.
VS '05 consists of 8 CDs: Disks 1 and 2 are the actual software, 3 is Remote Debugging, 4 is Visio Tools, 5, 6, and 7 are the MSDN library, and 8 is the 64 bit SDK. I installed VS Disk 1, which autostarted. I selected Install from the setup dialog. A complete install of everything would require over 2.5 Gig (yes, Gig) of diskspace. I decided not to install Remote Debugging, VC++, and J#. The setup ran for a few minutes, then I was told I needed to reboot.
After a reboot, the install did not autostart. I had to manually select it. Again, I selected Install from the setup dialog and again, I had to select the options I wanted to install. Once again, setup ran for a few minutes and again I was told I had to reboot.
Hoping that the third time is a charm, I rebooted. This time the install restarted and had remembered my options. Setup again ran for a few minutes, then I was prompted to install disk 2. I did that, wait for a while, then was prompted to install disk 1 again. Setup then completed. I went on and installed the MSDN library and the Visio Tools.
Now, here are my issues with the install process. First, reboots should not be required when installing software...ever. In fact, to get be Windows logo compliant, the install cannot require a reboot. IMO, all Microsoft software should be Windows logo compliant. While beta software, such as VS '05 should not go through the certification process, they should have it as a goal and be designed that way.
Second, the install should have remembered my settings from the first time and not required me to reenter them. Granted, if item one above had been met, then this would not be an issue.
Third, an install should never require you to insert a disk more than once. Long before I inserted disk 2, the setup procedure knew all my options and how my PC was configured. Anything that needed to be run from disk one could have been run before disk 2 or cached on the hard drive.
Users have long been asking for easier installs. While I only listed a few items here, it would go a long way to satisfy users if software publishers would do these few things.
VS '05 consists of 8 CDs: Disks 1 and 2 are the actual software, 3 is Remote Debugging, 4 is Visio Tools, 5, 6, and 7 are the MSDN library, and 8 is the 64 bit SDK. I installed VS Disk 1, which autostarted. I selected Install from the setup dialog. A complete install of everything would require over 2.5 Gig (yes, Gig) of diskspace. I decided not to install Remote Debugging, VC++, and J#. The setup ran for a few minutes, then I was told I needed to reboot.
After a reboot, the install did not autostart. I had to manually select it. Again, I selected Install from the setup dialog and again, I had to select the options I wanted to install. Once again, setup ran for a few minutes and again I was told I had to reboot.
Hoping that the third time is a charm, I rebooted. This time the install restarted and had remembered my options. Setup again ran for a few minutes, then I was prompted to install disk 2. I did that, wait for a while, then was prompted to install disk 1 again. Setup then completed. I went on and installed the MSDN library and the Visio Tools.
Now, here are my issues with the install process. First, reboots should not be required when installing software...ever. In fact, to get be Windows logo compliant, the install cannot require a reboot. IMO, all Microsoft software should be Windows logo compliant. While beta software, such as VS '05 should not go through the certification process, they should have it as a goal and be designed that way.
Second, the install should have remembered my settings from the first time and not required me to reenter them. Granted, if item one above had been met, then this would not be an issue.
Third, an install should never require you to insert a disk more than once. Long before I inserted disk 2, the setup procedure knew all my options and how my PC was configured. Anything that needed to be run from disk one could have been run before disk 2 or cached on the hard drive.
Users have long been asking for easier installs. While I only listed a few items here, it would go a long way to satisfy users if software publishers would do these few things.
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