Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 is now up and running on my machine and I thought I’d just write up a quick post about my experience of moving from Beta 1 to Beta 2.

The first step was to remove Beta 1 so I fired up the installer (below) and then went off to find the readme file to see if there was an order in which all the components had to be uninstalled.

   
The readme says to first uninstall Visual Studio and then to mop up any extra bits and pieces which are left over so I selected the “Change or Remove Visual Studio 2010” and was shown another screen containing the uninstall option.

   
After selecting to uninstall it was just a case of waiting and after a while the big green tick showed up to tell me the uninstall had completed successfully.

Now it was a case of tidying up any bits and pieces which hadn't been removed by the uninstall of Visual Studio. The Beta 1 readme gives you a specific order to remove these components in so one by one I removed:

• Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Extended Beta 1
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 1
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Beta 1 x64 Redistributable - 10.0.20506
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Beta 1 x86 Redistributable - 10.0.20506

I’d previously installed ASP.NET MVC 1.1 so at this point I realised that I should probably have removed that prior to removing Visual Studio but I didn't think it would be that big an issue. Unfortunately after removing “Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Tools for ASP.NET MVC 1.1” I just couldn’t get ASP.NET MVC 1.1 to uninstall, it kept telling me to remove the tools first but I’d just done that! After a little bit of searching I found this post (http://forums.asp.net/p/1482699/3465455.aspx) on the ASP.NET forums and managed to find the correct registry key to remove.

With Beta 1 removed I did a quick reboot before firing up the installer for Beta 2. I know it’s a bit silly but the first thing to impress was the new logo, I really like it.

   
After selecting “Install Visual Studio 2010” it’s a case of clicking through the usual screens and selecting which components you would like to install and then watching as it works it’s way through the list and after a while you will hopefully get the success screen.

Time to fire up Visual Studio.

   
A  very straight forward and quick install.  My only issue after the install was trying to get Visual Studio and Visual SVN to play nicely together but it looks like this is a known issue. Thankfully the always brilliant stack overflow had the answer.

visual studio 2010, visualsvn