Recommended Visual Studio Installation Order

It seems like developers spend an inappropriate amount of time installing software on their machines, or rebuilding them altogether. Maybe your wiping an old machine clean or rebuilding a new one (yay!), but if you're not installing patches, trying new software or tweaking old stuff, it probably means you're in the process of a rebuild.

If you're a .NET developer using Visual Studio, SQL Server (maybe a little Microsoft Expression in there, too), here's a suggested order sent over by my good friend, Brian (soon to be Mayor of the great city of Ralston, NE!). This is a suggested order list for Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008:

Update: I recently installed a new version of Windows 7 on a MacBook Pro and skipped Visual Studio 2005 (then again, I skipped TFS, too):

Here's an additional article to reference that may contain updates:

http://consultingblogs.emc.com/jamiethomson/archive/2009/04/23/installation-order-for-visual-studio-2008-sp1-team-explorer-and-sql-server-2008.aspx

1. Visual Studio 2005
2. Team Explorer 2005
3. All service packs and hot-fixes for 2005
4. Visual Studio 2008
5. Team Explorer 2008
6. Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and all other hot-fixes
7. SQL Server 2008 (I installed the development version and just the client tools)

Also, if you want to be able to do “Edit and Continue,” you’ll have to change your build platform from Debug / AnyCPU to Debug / x86 (the two combo boxes in the tool bar at the top). Edit and Continue isn’t possible with 64-bit applications (which is what you’ll be compiling with on a 64 bit computer) in Visual Studio 2008.

I hope this helps. I know I'll be referring back to it myself soon, and often.