Installing SQL Management Studio 2008 Express

When installing SQL Express 2008, you may get the following error if you already have VS 2008 installed:

Rule “Previous releases of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008” failed.

A previous release of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is installed on this computer. Upgrade Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to the SP1 before installing SQL Server 2008.

I’ve read a load of blogs about this issue, but none of them solved the problem that I was having, as I already had VS 2008 SP1 installed.

Galin Iliev’s excellent blog post comes close but doesn’t quite hit the bullseye (although I believe that his solution would probably work as well). The problem is that I have Visual Studio 2008 database edition installed as well. So, from Galin’s post, I found that the following registry key stores version settings of VS:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DevDiv\VS\Servicing\9.0

Going in there, I see not one, but three sub-keys: -

I’ve annotated the above with what I guess the different keys represent.

Inside each of those keys are a load of properties, one of which is named SP. VSTD is set to 1 (correctly), but VSDB and VSDBGDR are both set to 0.

Solution: Ensure that all three keys have the “SP” value set to 1.

It appears that the SQL installer expects all of them to be set to 1 otherwise it won’t install…

P.S. Probably best to set them back to 0 after the install

Windows Live Mail – Empty Inbox Quick View

I had a problem recently whereby the quick view of the Inbox went completely empty. I panicked at first, thinking that all my emails had gone walkies. Thankfully, it was just the view. Why it happened, I don’t know, but, I found a fix for it. In fact, as I write this, it has just happened again! The solution is here, but briefly: –

1. Delete the value SearchFolderVersion in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\ key.
2. Restart WLM.