FYI
Yesterday I received a new hard drive for my laptop and, as is customary, spent a long lonnnng time installing lots of software onto it. Everything was going well until I came to install SQL Server 2008 developer edition which refused to begin installation because a check for previously installed versions of Visual Studio 2008 failed. SQL Server expects Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 to be installed, it won’t install without the service pack (SP). The strange thing is that I has already installed SP1, here’s a screenshot of Visual Studio’s ‘About’ screen:
As you can see Visual Studio claims that the service pack had been installed, which indeed it had. So why did SQL Server setup claim that it wasn’t?
It turns outs that the problem is caused by Visual Studio 2008 Team Explorer which I had installed prior to attempting to install SQL Server. Jason Barile has all the details on his blog entry Make Sure You Reinstall VS 2008 SP1 After Installing Team Explorer from which I’ve taken the following information:
If you installed Team Explorer into Visual Studio after you applied Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1, you’ll need to re-apply the service pack. If you don’t, then you’ll be running an unsupported “mixed mode” installation, meaning the core Visual Studio components will be at the SP1 servicing level and TE will be at the RTM servicing level.
Reinstalling the service pack fixed the problem and I was able to successfully install SQL Server 2008. Check Jason’s blog entry for the finer details.
In summary, the installation order for all the components mentioned here should be:
- Visual Studio 2008
- Team Explorer
- Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1
- SQL Server
-Jamie
P.S. I long for the day when we only ever have to install a piece of software once and it automatically propagates to any new machine that we obtain!