Today I ran into a strange problem.  Visual Studios would not launch!  No matter what I did, it was totally dead.



I had remove Visual Studios 2005 Beta 2 a few weeks ago and upgraded to RTM.  Today, I installed BizTalk 2006 Beta 2 and configured it with no problems.  I went to open Visual Studios to work with BizTalk and nothing happened.



I got the Visual Studio Launch screen for about 5 seconds and then gone.  I could see the program start in the task manger but then it just disappeared.  I was not getting any errors in the event log.



I start by reinstalling VS with no luck.  So, I tried uninstalling and reinstalling VS.  Yep, that took some time; still no luck. 



I then took a look at all my installed programs.  I found two products that I probably should have uninstalled with Beta 2. 



They were:


Windows Workflow Foundations Components for Visual Studios 2005


Software Development Kit for WinFX



I removed both of these items and Visual Studios opened as expected with no problems. 



I’m guessing it was the Windows Workflow that was causing the problem since it was not RTM friendly. 


 


I was surprised that having this installed would actually prevent Visual Studios from running.



So, the moral of the story is make sure you get all the different beta products removed when you upgrade to the RTM of Visual Studios.