Princess Fix IT: Uhuh yeah that's right, I'm The (Wo) Man

So I kicked ass at work today. No, I didn't solve countless problems and make lots of videogame-maker-boys happy. I did, however, save one programmer's ass.
Visual Studio .NET has been in our environment since the very day we received the disks. Steve and I had much fun figuring out the network install. Ahem. Anyhow, it's typically a very easy program to deal with. It either works or doesn't and if it doesn't, a simple repair\uninstall\reinstall will fix it right up. No problem right? Unfortunately that was not the case today.
The initial issue: Error upon launching the program, "MS Development Environment has not been installed for the current user. Please run setup to install the application." Research indicates the issue is due to a registry key that should be deleted. Great, but guess what? Yup, that key doesn't exist on this user's system. OK then....next? Further research brings forth yet another registry key to delete and yes, it does get rid of the error message, but proceeds to close the program approximately two seconds after initialization. Again, not acceptable. Well, dear reader, you might be asking, "Why didn't ya just yank it and reinstall?" Sure 'yanking it' has it's advantages, but unfortunately, brought about a new error, "Unable to determine a valid ordering for installation." Fuck you!
Let me be clear on something, I thoroughly dig troubleshooting software. It's absolute and in a Windows environment, you can trick it to doing what you need in a million and one ways. It just took a million and two today :)
After much tinkering I was finally able to get a repair to run and upon completion a new error awaited me, "The XBOX Extension for VS .NET is totally fucked and so are you. To run it anyway use the following command: devenv /resetskippkgs " OK what God did I piss off?
You might also be asking at this point, dear reader, "Princess, why didn't you just rename or delete the .NET directory and try to reinstall?" Cause that's HALF-ASS tech support right there folks and I don't want to be right back there a month or so from now troubleshooting a whole new set of issues. Thank you very much.
More tinkering and research (did I mention I owe my career to Google Groups?) and finally, new information. I was able to cleanly yank .NET from the system using the following command:
msiexec /x :drive where CD/DVD is loaded:\vs_setup.msi
A reboot and reinstall later, pure unadulterated functionality.

Uhuh yeah that's right, I'm The (Wo) Man.

Comments

"The XBOX Extension for VS .NET is totally fucked and so are you."

That is classic. If only error messages actually said that.

In fact, I think I'm gonna stick an error message like that somewhere in one of our internal tools.

Posted by: vince | August 5, 2003 10:54 PM

I love unadulterated functionality! Where are the smileys on this thing?

Posted by: Kevin B. O'Reilly | August 6, 2003 10:08 AM

I think you should totally pop in an error message like that. I would get a kick out of a phone call from a user asking why his art tool just told him to fuck off! :)

As far as smilies go, honey...I haven't researched that yet, but I'm sure there is a plug-in somewhere for it.

Posted by: Princess | August 6, 2003 11:02 AM

Yeah, you add that message box vince, and the one time it pops up will be at some demo given to shareholders or something along those lines. You'll end up another urban legend in the game dev world.

Posted by: crowdpleazr | August 7, 2003 9:33 AM

As for the error message: The day our shareholders will be interested in our tools or our tools are ready to be demonstrated to our shareholders is in the /distant/ future.

No offense, Vince. Your stuff works nice - but most of our tools are like a house of cards. Nice to look at, but don't dare touching it.

As for Studio.NET: #@$&($()!@_!!!@#

This thing is a MAJOR piece of crap when it comes to project handling. If you /ever/ try to move a project that has been under source control to a different place, prepare for a fun afternoon. VS.NET obviously squirrels away information about Source control associations somewhere and it sure ain't the project directory, or the about 400 gazillion project files it creates. I mean, come on: .sln .vssscc .vcproj .vcproj.vspscc .suo

FIVE different files to store project information. In a pseudo-text format. AAARRRRGGHH!

(As you can easily tell, I've just had a close encounter with that stuff. Be back when I chill out...)

Posted by: Groby | August 7, 2003 10:17 AM

You are so right, Groby...no way our shareholders would be interested in actual product development. That requires getting involved and why would they dare do something like that!

Posted by: Princess | August 7, 2003 9:12 PM

Well I had this problem, and had no joy getting it sorted. Popped in the CD, tried Princesses solution and waddya know? VS.Net is finally toast! Princess, if you would care to put up an image of your boots, I will gladly lick the screen, your majesticalness.

Posted by: Pedro | November 11, 2003 7:15 AM

That rocks, Pedro! I'm glad I could be of some assistance. Feel free to come back anytime, but keep in mind, bootlicking is optional :)

Majesticalness...man, I could get used to that term!

Posted by: Princess | November 11, 2003 10:37 PM

Yes you are the (WO)man, I was having the same problem with my VS .net install, and your fix worked great.

Thanks

Posted by: Jon H | December 22, 2003 8:23 PM

No problem Jon, glad I could help :)

Posted by: Princess | December 23, 2003 9:17 AM

I also had the same problem, and your fix solved it for me too.

Thank you, Princess

Posted by: FitzGlitz | February 25, 2004 10:57 PM

You're quite welcome, Fitz.

Posted by: Princess | February 26, 2004 8:48 PM

Hi Princess,

I'm just running in the same issue. The license key C4B8C1BC-A36C-4723-AF48-F362BFAB9DF5 don't exist on my registry. Uninstalling and rebooting didn't work neither. You talk about an additional step you had ("Further research brings forth yet another registry key to delete and yes, it does get rid of the error message [...]").

Do you remember what that other key was ? I didn't find anything on the web this morning.

Thanks for your help

Posted by: Frederic | June 21, 2004 10:04 AM

Sorry about the delay Frederic, you got lost in the shuffle...

Here's the registry key:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses\EFDFE3FF-DA04-4be6-97FA-11D13DB17919]

Hope that works for you!

Posted by: Princess | June 28, 2004 7:39 PM

Hi... i'm programmer and i just patched my home copy of vs.net 2k3 to sp1 this morning and now i'm getting that "visual studio" "has not been installed for the current user." error.... do you have more detail on how to fix this? when i try to run the repair or reinstall... i get the ATI control panel repair/reinstall dialogs in spanish.... in stead???? any ideas?

Posted by: dave | September 16, 2004 1:38 PM

You are so the (wo)man!

a fix that actually worked

Dont worry many can't park and wifi is such a lame arse cludge...

you saved another ass

lovethesitehowledwithlaughteratsomeoftheposts

Posted by: Chris | March 7, 2005 6:05 PM

Thanks a lot Princess. You saved my system from reinstallation.

Posted by: mlemanczyk | April 9, 2005 4:16 PM

Glad I could be of assistance, mlemanczyk!

Posted by: Princess | April 10, 2005 10:36 AM

Hi! Princess