VisualStudio 2008 install failing because of pre-release products

I can get my work machines into pretty odd states due to various private/beta versions of Microsoft products I've installed. While trying to install VS 2008 on one of my machines, install kept failing, saying I had a pre-release product installed. Problem was, I'd already uninstalled that product and it didn't show up in Add/Remove programs. Varun Gupta's blog posts led me through fixing this problem, so I wanted to show that process in case anyone else is running into thsi issue.

Let's start from the beginning.

The first time I tried to install VisualStudio 2008, I got the following error dialog, saying that a pre-release of Microsoft Document Explorer was installed.

 

That dialog links to https://www.microsoft.com/express/support/uninstall/, which describes every product that should be uninstalled. This list included Document Explorer. To be safe, I uninstalled every program in the list.

Then I launched the VisualStudio 2008 setup again, but got the same error dialog, saying that a pre-release version of Microsoft Document Explorer was installed. Microsoft Document Explorer no longer appeared in Add/Remove programs, so it was time for some Live searches. :)

I landed on Varun Gupta's VS 2008 Troubleshooting Guide. Note that section 1,B,3,b,ii in his guide applies to this case. Following his instructions there, I ran msiinv.exe to get the list of installed components. In the output file, there was this entry:

Microsoft Document Explorer 2005
Product code: {0913C927-03D9-3FE1-B8A4-7A4C0C435A4F}
Product state: (5) Installed.
...

Varun's next step says to use msiexec /x to remove the product:

msiexec /x {0913C927-03D9-3FE1-B8A4-7A4C0C435A4F}

I re-launched VS 2008 setup, and it worked! Thanks Varun for posting these useful instructions. Now I can get back to work.