I cannot install Visual Basic .NET 2003 (Windows XP SP1)

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I have a Dell series 4600 pre-loaded with Windows XP (and upgraded to SP2). I have no earlier versions of VB installed except those VBAs that come with Office Pro 2003. The box containing the Visual Basic installation CDs is labeled “Visual Basic .net Standard Version 2003”. It contains the following five CDs:

Visual Basic .net Standard 2003 Disk 1 (Insert First)
Visual Studio .net 2003 Prerequisites
msdn Library for Visual Studio .NET 2003 (Numbered 1, 2 and 3)

1. I load the Insert First CD and receive a dialog headed “Visual Basic .NET Setup”, and containing four setup options numbered 1 through 4. Only option 1 is not grayed out. Option 1 says “Visual Studio .NET Prerequisites. Setup has detected that some of the system components that are installed on your computer do not match the versions required for Visual Basic .NET. You must install a different version of these components.”

2. I select option 1 and it instructs me to “Please insert Visual Studio .NET Prerequisites disk for Visual Basic .NET now.” I do this and it installs an NVidia grafics controller for Windows 2000/XP. (It does this IN SPANISH??!!) Then, after rebooting, it does nothing. It just sits there displaying my screen savers.

3. So, not knowing what else to do, I go to My Computer and select the Prerequisites CD that is still in the drive and am told to “Insert CD1 of the Visual Studio .NET 2003 product you are tring to install.” I reinsert the Insert First CD and I am back at step 1 repeating the steps exacely as described above. I cannot break out of this loop and get to the .NET Setup’s option 2 “Visual Basic .NET” installation.

As a precaution to my last attempt, I went into Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs, and removed all applications with the word Visual in its name. I resigned myself to wait until November’s release of the next version, but then figured that if there is something on my PC that is defeating this installation, it will probably defeat the next installation also.

I appreciate and thank you for any help that is given.

John Littell

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Hi John,
Do you have a firewall on your PC? If so, which one? Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 321434 may be of assistance.

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Thank you for responding. I am running the Norton Internet Security 2005 suite with everything but Norton AntiSpam turned on. (Outlook’s antispam seems sufficient.) A quick look at the article you listed notes only Zone Alarm; I will study the article further.

Thanks for your reply,

John

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John,
It does refer to “third party firewall software such as Zone Alarm so I suspect the symptoms may apply to others, including NAV. You might try unplugging your PC form the internet, disabling the firewall temporarily and then see if the installation works OK.

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Will do,

John

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I really wanted this to work. But it didn’t. I disabled the following…
Norton Internet Security
Norton Outbreak Alert
Norton Personal Firewall
Norton Intrusion Detection
Norton Privacy Control
I could not find an option to turn off the Norton AntiVirus. What I got was the same closed loop as before. 1) Mount the Visual Basic.net Disc (Insert First). 2) You need prerequisites – Mount the Visual Stueio.net disc. 3) Install (in Spanish) an NVidia graphics controller and reboot. 4) Remount the Visual Basic .net disc and I’m back to step 1. I really hope you can think of something else to turn off as I Really Want To Use VB.

Thanks, John

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Do you have the .Net framework 1.1 installed? You might try installing that separately via WindowsUpdate first to see if it helps. Otherwise, try inserting the second disc while holding down the shift key so it cannot autoplay and see if there is a directory called WCU on it. If so, try running the Setup.exe directly from there first to upgrade the components. If I have time this weekend, I will install NIS2005 on my other PC and try and install the copy of VS .Net 2003 RC2 I have from MSDN and see if I experience similar issues.

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John,
After reading through the VS .Net 2003 readme for known installation issues, I would recommend the following:
1. Make sure you have the latest driver for your video card installed from the manufacturer’s website.
2. You can choose Start-Run and type msconfig and then disable any Norton programs from starting up at boot time, then reboot your PC and try the install again. (As before, I recommend disconnecting from the internet while you retry the installation).

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Rory,
Again I wish I could report success. But the result is exactly the same as last time. (I lie. I did notice that the graphics addapter installer was worded slightly different,otherwise I never would have told it to continue. What was different? I don’t read Spanish.) Here’s what I did.

1. I did not nave .Net framwork 1.1. I downloaded it and installed it.

2. Even though the Insert First is labeled Disk 1, there is no disk 2. (See above list)

3. I did download and install the latest NVidia driver.

4. I used msconfig in the Startup tab to uncheck the only entry that was loaded from a Symantec directory: something called ccApp. I don’t know what that is, but when I rebooted there was no Norton icons of any kind in the system tray. Of course I took down my DSL connection before doing this.

Then I went through the loop again.

I greatly appreciate your efforts to help me,

John

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John,
Can you tell me what other applications/processes you have running after you have booted your PC? Simplest way may be to just open a command prompt (start-run- then enter cmd) and type the following:
tasklist >c:tlist.txt
which will create a text file in C: with the list of running processes – you can then post that here.

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Rory,
I tried running tasklist but got program not found..So I went looking for it. I tried download sections of pcmagazine.com, pcworld.com, microsoft.com and half a dozen other sites until in a “tasklist” section of search.freefind.com I spotted the message “This command is not available in Windows XP Home”. I, of course, have Home; I assume you have the other one. I tried various forms of msconfig but could not find anything that would write the screen list of processes to a file. Any suggestions?

See, I really am in there trying. John

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Sorry, I should have asked if you were on Home or Pro – try downloading it here

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Rory,
Thanks for the program. Why in the world would they restrict it to Pro? The file tlist.txt is attached. (I hope.)

John

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John,
I would suggest you disable all the unnecessary programs running at startup and retry the installation. Again, I suggest disconnecting from the internet and disabling NIS too. My suspicion is that one of those programs which monitors the registry or changes to startup files may be interfering with the setup, so if you can get it down to a barebones boot sequence, it may help. (Note: it could be any of the non-standard programs as I have read reports of some apps causing problems with memory management and video drivers during installation of VB .Net) I can’t narrow down which program might be the culprit at the moment, but I will try and do some research in the meantime.
HTH.

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Rory,
I put in masses of effort this weekend; I accomplished nothing (actually I’m a few steps back). This was the plan:

Install Visual Basic .net 2003 on an older PC I have in the back room. Compare the Tasklist of my operational PC with that of the older one and cut the processes back accordingly. Install Visual Basicon my operational PC.

The result: VB did not like the older PC’s Windows ME at all. Bit the bullet, re-formatted the hard disk and tried to upgrade to Windows XP (legal copy). FINALLY (that implies many hours of effort) determined that the older CD drive was incompatible with XP’s install. Oh good, I now have a PC with no OS on it.

To move forward: would it be possible for you to send me a Tasklist from one of your PCs; maybe one that already has Visual Basic .net 2003 installed. If so I will cut my preference list back to conform with yours and TRY AGAIN.

Thank you for your efforts and patience,

John

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Post deleted by gwenda

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Hi Gwenda. Greetings from the south (Oregon).

I don’t understand your question. What would be the advantage of buying and upgrading Windows XP Pro on my standalone home PC? How does this apply to my situation?

John

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John,
I will try and put something together when I get a minute but don’t currently have 2003 on any of my machines as I have been playing with the 2005 Express versions. If you want to try again, I suggest simply disabling any third-party apps such as registry checkers, backup software, anti-spyware and Norton.

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On the setup CD, there is a setup file located one subfolder down. If you run this, setup will proceed as normal.

I had the same problem , and I’m sorry I can’t be more specific, but I did find an article on it on a Microsoft Web Site somewhere …

I will find the install CD and give better instructions shortly.

J

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On disc 1 : I think it is the setup folder, then the setup.exe you should run. Make sure you have the .net 1.1 framework installed first though.

Hope this helps.

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Jayden,
Thank you for joining the discussion. I followed your instructions with the following results.

1. I installed .net 1.1 framework – program: dotnetfx.exe . It went without a hitch.

2. I ran the program Setup.exe from within the Setup directory on the Visual Basic .net Disc 1 CD. I received a screen headed “Visual Basic .NET Standard 2003 – English”, containing the message “1. The Visual Studio .NET prerequisites requirements to install Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Standard 2003 for this system have not been met. Please run the Visual Studio .NET Prerequisites setup.” This is what the original auto setup procedure complained about; it just used slightly different wording.

3. I loaded the CD labeled Prerequisites Version 2003. It immediately told me to “Insert CD1 of the Visual Studio .NET 2003 product you are trying to install. This ensures that only the necessary prerequisites are installed.” This is the CD that I had gone into in step 1 above to find and run D:SetupSetup.exe . Now, however, the program Autorun.exe in its root directory took over and put me right beck in the erroneous installation loop detailed earlier in the conversation above.

Now I’m thinking about combining your instructions with those earlier ones which told me to disable all anti-virus, anti-spam, the filewall (Norton’s only – I’m leaving the router on), and all the other anti-spy and anti-addware I’ve got running in the background. This is going to take some study and that’s going to take some time.

Any other information you can come up with would be appreciated.

John

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From the command line, try running the setupsetup.exe with the following switch “Setup.exe /NO_BSLN_CHECK”

ie. if you CD drive is D: then

D:SetupSetup.exe /NO_BSLN_CHECK

I didn’t have to do this, I managed to get it to recognise the pre-requisite install in the end…but this may (or may not help). This switch apparently disables the basline prerequisite check (I haven’t tried it myself to be honest).

Cheers

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IT WORKED!!!

The command with the no_bsln_check parameter did the trick. Checking back in my records I discovered that I had been trying, off and on, to load this VB since last April. When these last messages came in, I had officially given up. Not only did it load, but the step that upgrades the video driver did it in English (not Spanish).

Thankyou much, John

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John,
Glad to hear you got it sorted (and without having to go through the rigmarole I suggested !)

Jayden,
Nice tip – I’ll file that one away for future reference.

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Great. Good to hear it worked. Hopefully it all works okay and that no ‘essential’ pre-requisite has been missed….

As far as I could tell, and remember, the problem of not having the pre-requisites installed seeemed to be a bit bogus.

Thanks John and Rory. Always nice to help out.

J

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