Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 == Inability to Code. AT ALL.

I haven't had this particular problem. However, SP1 did render my client's entire product unrunnable under IIS7. It also broke a few DataTemplate scoping scenarios in part of the product we were building for them. SP1 has some cool features, but there are some catastrophic bugs - probably more than I have seen in any .NET release yet.

I can't remember the last time I installed an _RTM_ .NET release of any kind that was this destructive, and remember I've been installing .NET RTM's since 2001.

I haven't had any problems with it in my shop, but we only work with native code.

This sounds like you have a previous beta build of something on your system that is causing problems. Likely culprets: Silverlight 2 beta, LINQ to Entities or Astoria Beta, or VS 2008 SP1 Beta.

We recommend running this tool before doing an install: http://www.microsof t.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A494B0E0-EB07-4FF1-A21C-A4663E456D9D& displaylang=en

It goes through and cleans up registry entries and other things that might have been left behind from previous betas.

If you still have problems send me mail and we can have someone help further.

Thanks,

Scott

I've run that tool. Twice. :(

Thanks for the advice on the tool though. I'll do another remove, then re-run the tool and do a re-install of the SP and see how that pans out.

I had some issues with VS 2k8 sp1, but i did not see this one. This is something really weird. My resolved issues: 1. Visual studio dies when starting to edit XAML (to be accurate it dies when i want to use intellisense in XAML). There was a XML namespace that the VS did not like. I removed it from that file, an now it works fine. (if you need that namespace, you can't do anything) 2. http://forums.msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/vssetup/thread/61d52410-f101-4725 -8a78-00c8d141cca8/

I don't think that any of these would solve your problem, but give them a try, maybe!

So I uninstalled everything I could find except for VS 2008 itself. I then grabbed the patch removal tool and re-ran it. Rebooted. Installed VS 2008 SP1. As usual, halfway through the install Windows Update wants me to reboot. I postpone. Install finishes successfully, after a few reboots, Windows says "Updates failed to install" or some such, "Reverting changes". Then I get back the same bug I've been having where WPF apps fail to build. Completely dead in the water and cannot compile WPF code.

You didn't send me email like I asked, so am not sure if you still have issues. If you do, though, send me email and someone from the setup team can look at it. It sounds like something on your system is causing setup not to work. It could potentially be some previous beta not fixed by the cleanup tool - we can check the logs and find out for sure if you send email.

Thanks,

Scott

Scott, sent reply but apparently you're supposed to be out of the office dealing with your new baby and not fixing my VS 2008 SP1 problems :)

Sorry for your troubles Kevin!. Try this: Uninstall "Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1", then without touching anything else manually browse to the .NET 3.5 SP1 installer on the VS 2008 SP1 ISO (or download it) and run that directly. Run it explicitly as admin. After re-install it should prompt you for reboot, restart the machine and everything should work. Please let us know if it fixes your issue, thanks!

Thanks for the tip. My wife made home-made chili tonight. I will eat chili first, then try and fix VS 2008. Sorry, but good chili trumps WPF any day of the week ;)

not a problem, enjoy the Chili and I look forward on hearing if you had the same positive results as I did with this fix :)

This fix didn't even come close to the problem. I got my 11,000-file reboot and that worked fine. Then it did the 6,000 file reboot and got to stage 1 of 3 of applying updates, said that some updates did not install properly and "reverting changes". VS 2008 SP1 shows up as SP1, .NET 3.5 SP 1 appears to be installed, but I cannot build WPF apps.

wow that sucks im very sorry :(. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you need help trying to debug this further.

I'm uising WPF, Linq to Dataset and the integration with Winforms and I did not have any single problem. Actually VS Wpf Designer is improved in terms of performance. The only warnong i had was about deprecated bitmap effect.

Thanks God!

The same problem here, it's not my machine however my girlfriend's machine is an x86 no betas but after sp1 install the same problem Kevin states, i have not had any problems with x64 vista sp1 machine, could this be a issue of x86 vista without sp1 machine?

Apparently, very few people (relatively) have this problem... I was running Vista x86 SP1 when I attempted the .NET 3.5 SP1 install.. My guess is that it was related to the months of abuse I've been smothering that Vista install with as I install beta after beta after beta...

Kevin, did you ever find a solution to this problem? I have having the same thing and dread reinstalling Vista to try and solve it.

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3777421&SiteID=1

The above link, is a bug report of the problem I created since I have the same problem.

Did anyone ever find a solution?

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?Feedb ackID=376503 is the bug report.

The previous link was to the forum post.

I had the same problem - resolved by uninstalling .Net framework 3.5 service pack 1 then reinstalling it - no problems since.