No Zytrons In Range

Ok, so MS SQL Server has the worst installer in history. And Visual Studio 2008 has the second-worst installer in history. That’s a given. But when the two installers attempt to interact with each other, you’re left with an experience only slightly more pleasant than a lifetime of burning in hellish torment.

If you work with these two products, you’ll probably see the following dialog box when trying to install MS SQL Server 2008 SQL Server Management Studio (say that one three times fast!):

Rule “Previous releases of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008″ failed.

A previous release of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is installed on this computer. Upgrade Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to the SP1 before installing SQL Server 2008.

(Yes, the grammatical error is in the original.)

It sounds simple enough, but true evil is always subtle in its workings. Once you receive this message, you do the only rational response, open up Visual Studio 2008 and select “Check for Updates” in its Help menu. This takes you to Windows Update which, lo and behold, actually has a download available for Visual Studio 2008 SP1! So you spend the next hour and a half (no kidding) installing the service pack from Windows Update.

So far this is the most easily-overcome obstacle I’ve ever encountered with one of these horrible installers! Or it would be if it worked, but of course it doesn’t. Despite the Windows update installer claiming to update Visual Studio 2008 to SP1, it doesn’t appear to actually do anything at all. Even after you reboot. At least, the version number for Visual Studio doesn’t change and SQL Server’s installer still barfs all over it.

Crap.

After a long Google search, I found a lengthy explanation of the problem, and if you spend the requisite 3 hours trying to understand the gibberish, you’ll realize where you went wrong. You can’t update Visual Studio using the update link that comes built-in to Visual Studio, you fool! You must instead use the one available at this website!

I write this in the hope, probably futile, that it’ll rise in the Google rankings and help the next pour soul who receives that poorly-written error message with no clue how to resolve it. And with the hopes that somebody who works on Microsoft’s SQL Server or Visual Studio teams will read this and fix their goddamned installers already! (but I’m not holding my breath on that one.)