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How I solved installation problems with Visual Studio 2017

Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 12:18 pm
by ic2
Visual Studio 2017 has a history of installation problems. There are 100's and maybe 1000's of questions of users who failed to install 2017. My original attempt was finally done by a well informed Microsoft Agent in India, using one of my Action Pack included issues. She re-started the setup maybe 10 times, every time renaming an already present directory of VS 2015. Not long after that I decided for several reasons for a full re installation of W10.

Now my last Vulcan program was converted to X# there was no reason anymore to keep using VS 2015. I decided to first de-install it and then delete all traces on it on disk (a Microsoft de-install rarely de-installs everything) .

However, VS installation still failed without a message. These are well hidden between the log; only with an offline installation you get decent error messages. Also these errors I came across are widely mentioned; no doubt some users install VS without problems (I even did on a comparably setup laptop) but too many people have setup problems while almost all setups of other products work fine on the same machines.

With 2 tricks I was able to install VS. The installer of VS 2017 is even more crap than VS itself. If any of you come across the same installation I hope it helps you:

https://developercommunity.visualstudio ... ccess.html

ADD/EDIT:

I actually found the cause after I saw that still the emulators remained invisible: a repair (later I reinstalled everything also because 5 VS 2017 were displayed as installed) with the virus scanner switched off solved the problem. Interesting detail is that the virus scanner is Windows Defender. So apparently Microsoft's own virus scanner sees Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 as a kind of virus blocking the correct installation of parts of it. I can understand that part.

Dick

How I solved installation problems with Visual Studio 2017

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 10:05 am
by TerryB1
Hi Dick
I have looked at your reference and it is clear many people are experiencing the same problems as yourself.
I have to wonder why? I hope I don’t live to regret the following statement but the fact is I have not experienced the sort or extent of problems evidenced.
Of course, I’ve no real idea of what’s causing the problem. But FWIW I would never, ever attempt to rename files unless I had produced them myself and knew exactly the full implications of such changes. Nor would I allow a well-intentioned expert to do so.
The reason is that everything on your computer is designed to be controlled overall by logic and thus is computer-controlled. This embracing controlling logic is held and interlinked across the board in various files which themselves are designed to be updated in harmony (i.e. under logical control). If you manually upset that linkage there is no way anyone can predict the side effects.
In many cases upset links will be self-healing with some cumulative update or similar.
If across-the-board problems persist, I can only guess that some rogue entry has established itself in the registry and a suitable registry cleaning tool may be your best bet.
Just some thoughts
Terry

How I solved installation problems with Visual Studio 2017

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:50 pm
by ic2
Hello Terry,

I think your observation is right. The Microsoft expert who originally made VS 2017 work was 'paid' from the Action Pack incidents, so it's the normally high quality expensive support and I was quite surprised she routinely began to rename directories. Apparently she had done that before.

Yes, the installation worked fine on my laptop which is more or less configured the same as my Pc. Registry difference may explain it. But given the large number of problem reports and followers of posted issues I think the basic design of the installation program is plain sloppy.

I intend to write an article about it and asked comments from a senior VS head of development whom I showed why I preferred Cavo above VS, in an interesting Teamviewer session, 2 years ago. I'll keep you posted.

Dick