Here’s what had worked for me but your mileage may vary.
Using Add/Remove Programs, uninstall Beta 2 or CTP in this particular order:
- Remove “MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2005 Beta”
- Remove “Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition”
- Remove “Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Tools Express Edition”
- Remove “Microsoft SQL Native Client”
- Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office System 2005 Runtime Beta”
- Remove “DMA Transport Update for VS 2005 Beta 2″
- Remove “Microsoft Device Emulator 1.0 Beta”
- Remove “Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0 Beta”
- Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional” or (Standard/Enterprise Architect/Team Suite, etc.)
- Remove “Microsoft Document Explorer 2005 Language Pack”
- Remove “Microsoft Document Explorer 2005″
- Remove “Microsoft SQL Mobile 2005 Development Tools”
- Remove “Microsoft MSXML 6 SDK and Parser”
- Remove “Microsoft Visual J# .NET Redistributable 2.0 Beta Language Pack”
- Remove “Microsoft Visual J# Redistributable Package 2.0 Beta”
- Ensure all Visual Studio 2005 products have been removed from your system
- Remove “Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Beta Language pack”
- Remove “Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Beta”
Continue with the following post uninstallation manual clean up (* implies ‘any name’):
- Delete HKLM and HKCU Software\Miscrosoft\VisualStudio\8.0 registry keys
- Delete “\Documents and Settings\YourProfileName\Application Data\Microsoft\CLR Security Config\v2.0.*” folder
- Delete “\Documents and Settings\YourProfileName\Application Data\Microsoft\DbgClr\8.0″ folder
- Delete “\Documents and Settings\YourProfileName\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0″ folder
- Delete “\Documents and Settings\YourProfileName\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\DbgClr\8.0″ folder
- Delete “\Documents and Settings\YourProfileName\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0″ folder
- Delete “\Documents and Settings\YourProfileName\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\devices\8.0″ folder
- Delete “\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.*” folder (assuming Windows is installed into \Windows\ folder)
- Delete “\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8″ folder, ignoring any warnings you might get
- Delete v2.0 assemblies from GAC by navigating to “\Windows\assembly” folder. v2.0 assemblies are the ones whose name start with System.*, Microsoft.* or vj* and have version of 2.0.0.0
- Delete old Crystal Reports assemblies from GAC. Their names start with Crystal* and have version of 10.*
Reboot just in case, disable antivirus and antispyware software and you should be ready to install Visual Studio RTM.
Some helpful references:
Uninstalling Previous Versions of Visual Studio 2005.
Download Microsoft’s autouninstall tool.
Hope this helps.
Sergey @ USysWare