A system administrator cloned a development machine for me, and provided me with a virtual machine to use for development. I got some code that I needed to change. Then I figured up Visual Studio 2005. The C++ compiler immediately complained that I needed to repair the Visual Studio installation. So I got the install media and attempted a repair. The repair warned that I might not have enough disk space for the install. Then it kept requiring a reboot. However when I rebooted the install did not pick back up. I went through the repair a couple more times until I gave up.At this point I decided to uninstall Visual Studio 2005 and try again. So I used Windows Add/Remove programs. I selected Visual Studio 2005 and chose to remove it. This removal took quite a long time. At the end of the install I got a horrible warning message. Microsoft wanted me to manually go in, find out if any listed components were present on my system, then remove them one at a time. What the heck is this? The install program was smart enough to know what items to install. Can’t it also uninstall them without me prodding it for every component? Bad form Microsoft.
Just so you don’t think I am overreacting, take a look at the warning message for yourself:
Next Step: Uninstall additional components
Additional components might have been installed on your computer by Visual Studio during setup.
These components must be manually uninstalled using Add or Remove Programs in the order listed below.
Note: Uninstalling these components might affect other applications you have installed that rely on these components.
The following components might have been installed with Visual Studio:
Microsoft MSDN 2005 Express Edition
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Runtime Language Pack
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Runtime
Microsoft Device Emulator version 1.0
Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 1.0
Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0
Microsoft SQL Mobile 2005 Development Tools
Microsoft Visual J# 2.0 Redistributable Package
Microsoft Visual J# 2.0 Redistributable Language Pack
Microsoft Document Explorer 2005
Microsoft Document Explorer 2005 Language Pack
Microsoft Data Access Components 2.8 SP1 (Windows 2000 only)
The following components might have been installed with SQL Server Express, and need to be removed in the order listed below:
Note: Uninstall of the SQL Express instances will leave behind the user-created databases, which can then be re-attached to the new instance.
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express CTP
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Tools CTP
Microsoft SQL Server Setup Support Files
Microsoft SQL Native Client
The following components must be uninstalled last:
MSXML 6.0 Parser and SDK (only on 32bit)
MSXML 6.0 Parser and SDK x64 (Only on 64bit)
Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Language Pack
Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
