Grausian Syndrome
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Yeah, I had similar problems with 2005 myself... I finally figured out the cause but it drove me crazy for a couple of days. In my case I was trying to install SP1 for 2005 but I didn't have enough room on the C drive so it bombed just barely before finishing. It took me a while to figure out it was because I had ran out of space because the error wasn't very helpful. But the real problem was that it screwed up the install so I had to get one of those tools like you mention to rip the install off the box because the uninstall (although it ran) didn't work right (it would fail to reinstall afterward).
I can well believe it. The most annoying thing about VS2005 is that many of the most annoying bugs with it (e.g. the Add-In Manager being unable to toggle the load state of add-ins registered in the local machine hive) were reported at Beta 2 and closed by MS as "won't fix". Those bugs are still (it seems) there today, for the most part. A pretty poor effort from a quality perspective, all told.
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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I think I've just been struck down by Grausian Syndrome. I had the bright idea earlier today of creating a small Compact Framework app for my PocketPC. And that's about as far as I got... I hadn't got the "Smart" Device bits and pieces installed in VS 2008. Not a problem, says I, and inserts the DVD and installed the relevant bits. Fired up VS and attempted to create a Smart Device project only to receive a whole bunch of mumbo jumbo messages about SQL Server Compact needing to be reinstalled and VS refusing to create the project. So, dutifully I reinstalled SQL Server Compact. Same result. So after a bit of fruitless Googling, I thought I'd re-install VS from scratch. Fire up the un-installer only to be told "the un-installer encountered an error" or some such gibberish and it exiting in a flash. After some more googling, I discover a MS provided tool for un-installing VS 2008. Ha-ha! I run the tool, it removes VS 2008. Good. I then spent some time manually removing other bits and pieces mentioned in the tools docs. Good. I re-install VS 2008. Attempt to create a "Smart" Device project - no errors here! - and boom. The bleeding toolbox is empty! And not just for Smart Device projects, but for every single project type! More fruitless googling - I follow various bits of advice such as deleting tbd files and etc, but to no avail. Frustrated, I decide to un-install VS again and re-ran the tool. I then removed the additional bits mentioned in the docs, again, and this time went to even greater lengths by un-installing .Net 3.5. Shove the DVD in again. Let it install. Fire up VS - and still nothing in the toolbox! I try manually adding the control assemblies to the toolbox, which caused VS to crash. More fruitless googling. Thoroughly annoyed by this time, I un-installed, re-installed and cursed at the lack of toolbox content. By this time I was about ready to cause someone or something serious harm. However, I'd got this far and had another thought. I applied SP1 to VS 2008, fingers crossed... and what do you know? Yup, still no bleeding toolbox items. Just out of sheer bloody-mindedness I decided to try deleting the tbd files and etc. again. Much to my surprise and for no reason that I can fathom this time it actually worked! So 8 hours after I actually wanted to knock up a small Smart Device application now I can, but I really cannot be arsed! What a load of cobblers! I've said it before and I'll say it again, Grausian Syndrome or not, VS is crap to the max.
Which is why I run VS2005 etc in a Virtual Machine. Snapshots and backups of the VM have saved me countless hours... and if an install fails you just revert back - no need to uninstall and pray. Sure it runs a wee bit slower... faster hardware fixes that.
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I think I've just been struck down by Grausian Syndrome. I had the bright idea earlier today of creating a small Compact Framework app for my PocketPC. And that's about as far as I got... I hadn't got the "Smart" Device bits and pieces installed in VS 2008. Not a problem, says I, and inserts the DVD and installed the relevant bits. Fired up VS and attempted to create a Smart Device project only to receive a whole bunch of mumbo jumbo messages about SQL Server Compact needing to be reinstalled and VS refusing to create the project. So, dutifully I reinstalled SQL Server Compact. Same result. So after a bit of fruitless Googling, I thought I'd re-install VS from scratch. Fire up the un-installer only to be told "the un-installer encountered an error" or some such gibberish and it exiting in a flash. After some more googling, I discover a MS provided tool for un-installing VS 2008. Ha-ha! I run the tool, it removes VS 2008. Good. I then spent some time manually removing other bits and pieces mentioned in the tools docs. Good. I re-install VS 2008. Attempt to create a "Smart" Device project - no errors here! - and boom. The bleeding toolbox is empty! And not just for Smart Device projects, but for every single project type! More fruitless googling - I follow various bits of advice such as deleting tbd files and etc, but to no avail. Frustrated, I decide to un-install VS again and re-ran the tool. I then removed the additional bits mentioned in the docs, again, and this time went to even greater lengths by un-installing .Net 3.5. Shove the DVD in again. Let it install. Fire up VS - and still nothing in the toolbox! I try manually adding the control assemblies to the toolbox, which caused VS to crash. More fruitless googling. Thoroughly annoyed by this time, I un-installed, re-installed and cursed at the lack of toolbox content. By this time I was about ready to cause someone or something serious harm. However, I'd got this far and had another thought. I applied SP1 to VS 2008, fingers crossed... and what do you know? Yup, still no bleeding toolbox items. Just out of sheer bloody-mindedness I decided to try deleting the tbd files and etc. again. Much to my surprise and for no reason that I can fathom this time it actually worked! So 8 hours after I actually wanted to knock up a small Smart Device application now I can, but I really cannot be arsed! What a load of cobblers! I've said it before and I'll say it again, Grausian Syndrome or not, VS is crap to the max.
This is one of the reasons why I only run VS in a virtual machine. Starting from a blank system is as easy as copying one file. Going back to a previous version is just selecting a different VM. I've used VS6 and VS2005 within VirtualPC and VirtualBox. Plus I can easily try things to the system and roll them back.