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Installing the Visual Studio 2008 Development Stack… in the right order

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I just installed Windows 7 RC and once again found myself sitting with a clean Windows installation with no applications installed. That might be a nice feeling, but if you are like me, you will start to feel bored and actually a little bit lost within a couple of minutes without Visual Studio :-)

So how do you go ahead and install Visual Studio nowadays? Well, gone are the days where there only where one installer and you where done. Today there are several installers you have to run, just to setup Visual Studio 2008 to an updated application. This is due to extensions and service packs that have been released after the initial release of Visual Studio 2008. So is it not just to install all of these updates then? Well, yes and no. You should probably install them all, but it’s important that you do it in the right order.

That’s why I completed a list of the order you ought to install Visual Studio and some of the additional updates. Here you go:

  1. Install Visual Studio 2008
    • If you have Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition och Development Edition, make sure you install both, cause they are since October 1st, 2008, one product.
    • If you have Visual Studio 2008 Professional or any other version of Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite, just install that version and continue to #2
  2. Install Visual Studio 2008 Team Explorer
    … if you are connecting to a Team Foundation Server instance… and you are, right? Make sure you install Team Explorer before #3
    Download here.
  3. Install Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1
    If you ever find yourself in the position that you have installed Visual Studio 2008 Team Explorer after you have installed Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1, then you have to reinstall the Service Pack once again.
    Download here.
  4. Install Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR R2
    … if you have installed Database Edition or Team Suite.
    Download here.
  5. Install MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
    Download here.
  6. Install any additional applications and extensions to Visual Studio you would like
    • Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools
      Download here.
    • Microsoft Silverlight 2 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
      Download here.
    • Any Microsoft SDKs
      Find links to every SDK here.
    • Microsoft Expression Studio 2
    • SQL Server 2008 Development Edition
    • Etc.

I hope this helps some of you getting started with a fresh installation of Visual Studio 2008.