VS 2008 Installation – So much smoother this time!

You need to get out waaaaayy more if I’m the one telling you Visual Studio
2008 has shipped for MSDN subscribers.  It’s available for download as of
yesterday from the MSDN Subscribers Download.

Kudos to the Visual Studio team this time–uninstillation of beta 2 and
installation of the RTM bits is so much smoother this time.  Not everything
you need to uninstall is removed when you remove beta 2, so you have to go
through the add/remove programs and get the stragglers.  Use the list at http://www.microsoft.com/express/support/uninstall/ for
guidance.  But, some of the names on the list vary slightly (Crystal
Reports 2007 was listed in my Add/Remove as Crystal Reports for Visual Studio
2008), but they’re easy to match up.  Also, some of the items on the list
(e.g., Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5) are removed by the beta 2 uninstaller, so
you may see them in Add/Remove, and get an error when you try to uninstall
them.  They clean up with the next reboot.  Expect 2-3 hours of
uninstallation, manual clean up and reinstallation.

All in all, though, so much better than with VS 2005.