Advice needed.
My goal is to get a development system that I can use to continue developing a Dynamic Data project. While everyone else is having fun, I'm still trying to get back to a place I was at before trying to upgrade to VStudio SP1 Beta.
I orginally was working on an older computer that had been used to test other beta products. I attempted to uninstall all the beta products, but two of them would not uninstall (DotNet Framework 2.0 Beta and DotNet Framework 3 Beta). If I ran the uninstall it would tell me it could not be uninstalled since some program depended on it (it wouldn't tell me what program that was). When I ran the special uninstall tool and said there was no program to uninstall. I had read Scott Gu's blog about making sure you uninstall all betas before trying SP1 Beta, so I knew I was in trouble.
Everybody was being helpful with suggestions; however, I felt guilty taken up others valuable time working on something that was probably my fault. I finally decided it was time to start clean. I needed a new computer anyway, so I decided this was the ideal time to start from scratch. I wanted to be using an environment that would not be questioned when I had a problem to troubleshoot.
Two or three years ago I had tried using Virtual PC for my development, but I finally gave it up as too slow and buggy. I decided to give it another shot. Here's what I did in the sequence that I did it. I see that I made some mistakes along the way. Maybe this will help someone else.
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I bought a Quad core Q6600 with 4 Gigabytes of memory running Vista Home Premium 64 bit with SP1. This was best deal at Circuit City for less than $1,000.
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This is my first step into 64bit Windows. One concern is whether I'm now runing outside the main stream and will experience bugs that most people do not.
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My next concern is whether running in a virtual environment will cause problems that I would not have had otherwise.
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My first step was to install Virtual PC 2007; however, I instantly discovered that it doesn't work with Vista Home Premium.
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My next decision was whether to upgrade to Vista Ultimate or try VMware desktop which is compatible with Vista Home. Not knowing how involved the upgrade to Ultimate would be I decided that VMware might be the better route.
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Next I installed Windows XP SP2 on a 30 GB virtual drive.
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Next I installed Visual Studio 2008.
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I then realized that I had not installed all the service patches to XP. This would be a good time to try SP3 which I had not yet tried. I downloaded the version that can be installed on more than one computer, because I knew I would be using it again.
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I then tried a simple project in Visual Studion 2008 and instantly realized that I had not installed IIS after installing XP. I immediately started worrying about what affect installing IIS from the SP2 CD would have after already installing SP3. At this point I realized I didn't have a choice but to continue on.
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Next I installed IIS.
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Next I installed Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta
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Interestly, SP3 does not install IE7. I did a Windows Update and installed it and more patches.
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Next I installed SQL Server Management Studio Express so I could restore my database backup
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I created a new Dynamic Data web site
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When I run the program it gives me an error about the web server not being configured correctly. I manually configured the web site and selected ASP.Net 2.0.x. Still if I run the page, I get the error shown below:
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My real question is whether I should just start over or should I try to troubleshoot the current problem and move forward?
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Was my main mistake not installing IIS before I did SP3?
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Are others running in a virtual enviornment with no problems?
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Are others running Vista 64 bit with no problems or do most developers still use Vista 32 bit or XP Professional SP2?
Failed to access IIS metabase. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironmentException: Failed to access IIS metabase. The process account used to run ASP.NET must have read access to the IIS metabase (e.g. IIS://servername/W3SVC). For information on modifying metabase permissions, please see http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=267904. Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below. Stack Trace: [HostingEnvironmentException: Failed to access IIS metabase.] System.Web.Configuration.MetabaseServerConfig.MapPathCaching(String siteID, VirtualPath path) +637 System.Web.Configuration.MetabaseServerConfig.System.Web.Configuration.IConfigMapPath2.MapPath(String siteID, VirtualPath vpath) +9 System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironment.MapPathActual(VirtualPath virtualPath, Boolean permitNull) +174 System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironment.MapPathInternal(VirtualPath virtualPath, Boolean permitNull) +51 System.Web.CachedPathData.GetConfigPathData(String configPath) +344 System.Web.CachedPathData.GetConfigPathData(String configPath) +234 System.Web.CachedPathData.GetApplicationPathData() +38 System.Web.CachedPathData.GetVirtualPathData(VirtualPath virtualPath, Boolean permitPathsOutsideApp) +8767583 System.Web.Configuration.RuntimeConfig.GetLKGRuntimeConfig(VirtualPath path) +117 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.3031; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.3031