Windows 8.1 made a change for RTM – as some MSDN Subscribers might’ve noticed – where newly installed applications’ shortcuts are not immediately visible on the Start menu. They are still installed and indexed, but you need to either swipe down on your...

Yesterday I released servicing update 2.2.1 , which updates 2.2.0 to fix a few bugs and add a few cool new features: You can define the [string] $MsiAttributeColumnFormat variable to dictate how attribute columns should appear. The values you can...

Years ago I released PowerShell cmdlets (“command-lets”) that make querying product and patch information easy and robust. Windows PowerShell is a powerful shell that pipes objects – not simply text – and provides full access to the .NET Framework as...

To provide incremental value to our customers, we have released Visual Studio Update 1 and will be notifying all Visual Studio 2012 customers via toast notifications (like you get for VS package updates) soon. Soma’s blog has more information on VSUpdate...

Visual Studio 2012 Update (VSUpdate) is our way of delivering fixes and, in some cases, new features to our VS2012 customers. The latest Community Technical Preview (CTP) is available for download now. See the ALM and TFS blog post for more information...

The Windows Installer XML (WiX) team has released version 3.6 which, most notably, released a powerful and customizable chainer named Burn . The Visual Studio 2012 setup applications were built on Burn using features such as package caching , reference...

Symptom Customers installing Visual Studio 2012 RTM on pre-release versions of Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 may see the following error after launching the setup application: The .Net Framework installed on this machine does not meet the...

Windows To Go is a cool new enterprise features to enable a mobile workforce to carry around an enterprise-managed installation of Windows on a USB thumb drive. However, only certified thumb drives appear as fixed drives and, therefore, Visual Studio...

This was a preview of a Knowledge Base article which has been published as KB2746268 . Symptom After Visual Studio 2012 has been installed, the finish page displays the following: Setup Completed However, not all features installed correctly...

Now that Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 have been released , some customers are wondering if they need to uninstall the Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate (RC) first before upgraded. In general, the answer is “no”. VS2012 RC will upgrade...

Administrators and developers who need to detect if Visual Studio 2012 is installed on a machine can use similar keys as those used for past releases like Visual Studio 2010 . In general, these detection keys are always found in the 32-bit registry hive...

Requiring source packages during installation , repairs , and even uninstall are common occurrences for some customers. The core issue is that Windows Installer needs the source location of the package and its files to install - and can't find them automatically...

Slipstreaming Windows Installer patches is, technically, installing the MSP simultaneously with the MSI as a single transaction. This is, effectively: msiexec /i D:\product.msi PATCH=D:\patch.msp The applicable transforms (both the authoring changes...

We have released a new revision of the July 2012 Update for VS2012 RC . This update replaces – or supersedes – the previous update , which means the download link is the same. We have retained the previous packages that VSUpdate installs – or chains ...

A few months ago we introduced a new method of delivering updates to Visual Studio 2012. Today we published updates in the same manner for Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidates. You can download the July 2012 update (KB2703187) for VS2012 RC from http...

A few customers have reported the following error after upgrading from VS2012 Beta to the Release Candidate (RC): Invalid License Data Reinstall is required. Aaron Marten on the Visual Studio Extensibility team has a post describing how...

On a day of many great Release Candidate (RC) announcements , I should not forget another important RC milestone: Windows Installer XML (WiX) v3.6 RC . We’ve made a lot of improvements, simplified some scenarios, and fixed a lot of bugs. Download v3.6...

Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate (RC) – formerly known as Visual Studio 11 – is now available for download ! Jason Zander’s blog has a lot of great information on all the exciting changes we have made, including improvements...

Today we announced a new method of delivering updates using a notification system many Visual Studio developers should be familiar with: the Visual Studio Extension Manager. Developers will now be notified in Visual Studio when updates are available....

Users have asked why space is required on the system drive (typically the C: drive) when they choose to install Visual Studio 11 to another drive. While Visual Studio 11 does allow you to install the majority of features to another drive, VS11 still requires...

There are times when repairing or servicing a product that source media is required. As more product installs move to web-based installs, these prompts for source are harder to solve. In order to replace missing, corrupted, or older files, the source...

Along with the release of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview , we have released Visual Studio 11 Beta and Jason Zander has announced many of the great new and improved features in VS11 Beta. We have also introduced a new setup experience with VS11. Setup...

Late last week I checked in a feature for Windows Installer XML’s (WiX) chainer, Burn , that I’m really excited about (ask my colleagues): sticky patching. This is a feature at the bundle (what we call our composition of packages for Burn ) level that...

These days it’s more common to install products composed of more than one installer package. Modern applications are often a loose fitting of localized components and being authored into a single package just isn’t practical. For example, a localized...

Now that WiX v3.6 has been released , I introduce the managed bootstrapper application (MBA) interoperability layer. It’s been available for a while actually, and if you’ve installed any builds of WiX v3.6, or the Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0 Developer...