How to automatically uninstall Visual Studio 2005 Beta versions using the Automatic Uninstaller tool

For those of you who installed any pre-RTM versions of Visual Studio 2005, including Beta 2, I highly recommend running the Automatic Uninstall Tool.

Before Installing Visual Studio 2005

It’s recommended that you install Visual Studio 2005 on a clean machine. If you have a pre-RTM version, you can automatically uninstall previous versions with the Visual Studio 2005 Uninstall Tool.   

• Note: Do not use this tool if you have installed SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition or higher (SQL Server 2005 Express is okay)
• Personal Note: It seems to be relatively easy to get Visual Studio 2005 beta versions off your PC, using the above tool. SQL Server 2005 Community Tech Previews are another story altogether and I am currently consequently in a world of hurt.

Comments

• Anonymous
  October 28, 2005
  There is a good posting over at http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2005/10/27/485987.aspx which gives some detailed instructions on how to un-install the betas and RC versions... Also see http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/uninstall/preRTMuninstall/default.aspx for additional info.
• Anonymous
  November 18, 2005
  I've tried all the uninstallers and I couldn't uninstall MS SQL SQerver express 2005
• Anonymous
  November 20, 2005
  David, I had similar problems on 2 of the machines I was doing major uninstalls from. My colleague Bill O'Brien had good success going through the procedure described at this blog entry: http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2005/09/13/465401.aspx