I received an email from Tim this morning through my blog contact form that thanked me for my steps in my Installing and configuring the VB6 MSSCCI provider post. In his email, Time mentioned he had some issues with the install. I hope he doesn’t mind being quoted but his feedback was along the lines of;

“I can’t see anything in the VB6 Tools Menu (“Extras”-Menu in German Edition of VB6), I’m also not seeing any new items in the Start menu. However, setup of the .MSI file ran fine, without any warnings or errors.”

While I can’t help him out with the German versions of the software, I figured I should run through the steps to install the latest version to see if my previous post was still up to date.

Installing Visual Basic 6, the Team Foundation Client and the MSSCCI provider

I started with a fairly standard build (XPSP2, IE6, Office 2003) which already had .NET Framework 2.0 installed. If you don’t have .NET Framework 2.0 installed, you will need to install it prior to installing the Team Foundation Client.

Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise Edition Installation

• I installed Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise edition as Tim’s question concerned adding VB6 code to TFS
• I selected the “Products” installation and chose “Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise Edition“.
• I then selected Defaults for everything else during the installation and skipped the MSDN Library install.
• At this stage, let’s check the options in the Tools menu. Notice it defaults to SourceSafe.
  

Team Foundation Explorer

• The next step is to install the Team Foundation Explorer. This can downloaded from the Microsoft website (246Mb) or found on your TFS media.
• I installed the Team Foundation Explorer by running setup.exe from the TFC folder on the TFS distribution media. I selected all default options during the installation wizard.

• Once installed, I tested the TFC installation by running it. You do this by selecting Start | Program Files | Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 | Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.
  (NOTE: Don’t look for Team Foundation Explorer and don’t think this has installed VS2005. The Team Foundation Explorer is hosted inside the VS2005 shell)</li>

  • From the Tools menu, select “Connect to Team Foundation Server“
  • Click the Servers button then the Add button. Enter the name of the TFS server and click on OK, then Close. You should be given a list of all the team projects available on the TFS server if everything is OK.
  • Click the OK button. (There is no need to select a team project at this stage.)
  • Close the Team Foundation Explorer</ul>

  Visual Studio Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider

  • Download the latest version of the MSSCCI provider from the Microsoft download site (1.1Mb)
  • Double-click the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider.msi file to start the installation
  • Click Next
  • Accept the License Agreement and click Next
  • Accept the default installation folder (or change if required) and click Next twice
  • Once installation is complete, click Close

  Testing the result

  • To test this installation, start Visual Basic 6.0
  • I selected a Standard EXE as my project type and clicked the Open button

  • The MSSCCI provider should now appear in the Tools menu as shown in the following screenshot </li> </ul>

    Well, the installation went exactly as it should. Tim, I can’t explain why you don’t see this in the German version of VB6. I must say I haven’t had much to do with international versions of any software really. It might be worth posting your question to the MSDN forums in the Visual Studio Team System section to see if someone else might be able to point you in the right direction. You should also send your question to tfmsscci@microsoft.com

Well I must say that my 2007 has started well, especially this morning when I opened my Inbox and found an email from Microsoft congratulating me on becoming a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP). I get to join the ranks of a great group of MVP’s in the Visual Developer – Team System competency.

I am lucky to be in a country that has a really strong community (Usergroup Mania – VSTS Rocks in Australia) building around Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and I’m really excited to see what this year brings. Just this month we see the start of Australia’s third VSTS User group!

Well the Christmas presents (well sort of) from Microsoft just keep rolling out with Brian announcing that a new version of the Team Foundation Team MSSCCI Provider is available for download.

The listed enhancements in this release include;

• Enable handling branched solutions in Visual Studio 2003.
  • Fixed issues to enable provider to support TOAD for SQL Server 2.0.
    • Enhanced the “Choose Folder in Team Foundation Server” dialog.
      • Fixed bug which prevented Properties Dialog from displaying local path.
        • Work Items Query list in the Checkin Dialog is loaded and saved on the disk.
          • “Get” operation performance improvements.
            • Miscellaneous bug fixes

            I know a few clients that will be very happy to have the branching support.

            Download version 1.2 from the Microsoft Download site.

I just read the news on Rob’s Blog that the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista Beta is now available for download. The Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista Beta addresses areas of Visual Studio impacted by Windows Vista enhancements.

The 26Mb download is available from the Microsoft Download Centre.

Well it looks like the error that I received while uninstalling the beta version of the TFS SP1, (previous post) is also preventing me from installing the release version of the service pack

“Error 1309.Error reading from file: C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server – ENUProgram FilesTFSWeb ServicesVersion ControlWeb.Config. Verify that the file exists and that you can access it.”

This path does not exist and prevented me from doing a clean uninstall of the beta. I had an option to Ignore the error so I chose that option and things seemed to run OK from there. When I then tried to install the release version of the Service Pack, I received an error 1642 message saying basically that it thought that the target (TFS) was not installed on the computer I was trying to apply the service pack to. WTF?

Well I checked and confirmed that my clients could in fact connect to the TFS server that the patch didn’t think existed. Hmmmm. This lead me to find a cool little tool called the Patch Applicability Browser from Heath Stewart at Microsoft. The tool confirmed that I did indeed have a valid target for the TFS SP1 MSP file installed on my machine.

Argh! Error again, this time the nasty 1309 is back.

OK, let’s look at Logging. D:VS80sp1-KB926738-X86-ENU.exe /L* TFSSP1.LOG

Damn – nothing helpful.

Well it is at this stage that I realise I’m burning too much time on this one. This particular TFS instance is on my demonstration laptop I use when training and doing demos. Time to grab the source files from the “sort of still working” TFS install and do a rebuild. You may have got the better of me this time service pack but we’ll see who wins in the next round!

</p>

Last Friday I attended the Singapore DevCon 2006 event held in the Microsoft Office in Singapore. I wanted to see my good friend and VSTS MVP, Boon Tiong present his session before I flew back home to Brisbane. I had been attending the Longhorn Server Touchdown training in Singapore last week and decided to stay on an extra couple of days.

Well, things weren’t going very well getting Boon Tiong’s laptop to display on the two data projectors and as one of the last sessions they were considering simply canceling the session. After a quick chat to the organisers, it was decided that BT and I would co-present a session with just a whiteboard and some fast talking! The session was a blast and the laptop actually came good about 10 minutes from the end of the presentation. This allowed BT to give a *very* quick run through a couple of the features we had been talking about. After the session it was pretty much head straight to the Marriott to grab my luggage and then off to Changi Airport for the 7.5hr flight back to Brisbane. A fine way to finish off a good trip to Singapore.

Here’s a couple of photos from the event.

Leon posted on the Microsoft Isreal blog this morning that version 1.5 of TFS Permissions Manager is now available for download. This new version now includes support for group permission management, the lack of which was my main beef with version 1.0. Now I’m really happy with it

This is a must have utility for anyone managing security in TFS.

Read Loen’s blog post here

Download the TFS Permission Manager 1.5 here

For those of you preparing to install Visual Studio, here are a few things that might make things a little easier for you.

Before you begin

Download the neccessary files

Download the Visual Studio 2005 Service pack 1 installer 

Check your free disk space

Before you begin, make sure you have adequate disk space for the installation. Remember the installer must expand and then you must have room for the installation.

Microsoft recommends your have 6.4Gb available before you apply the service pack

REMOVE Web Application Projects first

If you have previously install Web Application Projects onto your machine, you need to remove it before you install the service pack. This is a very painless and easy step as shown below;

1. Control Panel

   Add/Remove Programs

   • Select “Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Projects”
     • Click the “Remove button”</ol>

       Remove previous Beta version (if you installed it)

     If you installed the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 BETA, you should uninstall that beta before you install the release version of SP1.

     The way I did this was to append the “uninstall” switch the end of the Beta install package in the command line.

     Eg. **VS80sp1-KB918525-X86-Beta-ENU.exe /uninstall**

     During the uninstall process, I was prompted to insert the “Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Premier Partner Edition – ENU Disk 1”. I tried inserting both the Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite DVD and the Team Foundation Server CD but neither seemed to be correct? There was even a folder called “PPE” on one of the disks that contained the file it was after but it didn’t work either… It rolled back this small part of the uninstall so I will see what happens when I got forward regardless.

     Another thing during the uninstall that tripped me up was I was also asked for the “Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Developers – ENU” media even though I only used the Team Suite DVD to install the product. It did not work with the Team Suite media and I had to use the requested DE media to keep it happy.

     Installation time

     Installing the Service Pack

     Get a good book ready or maybe an MSDN Webcast to watch. This baby will take some time.

     1. Double-clicking the VS80sp1-KB926601-X86-ENU.exe file
     2. Follow the prompts…
     3. Read your book or what the aforementioned Webcast

     Depending on exactly what you have installed, the installation could easily take over an hour to complete. It will also appear that the installer keeps restarting but it fact there are just a number of similar patches being installed in an automated fashion.

Prerequisites

Download the neccessary files

Download the Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Service pack 1 installer</p>

Backup your Server

Follow Chuck’s advice and make sure you backup you TFS service prior to installing the service pack. You just never know when things might go pear shaped!  (If you can test your restore ability, that’s a good idea as well)

Remove the Beta (if you installed it)

If you installed the Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server service pack 1 BETA, you will want to remove this prior to installing the final version.

The way I did this was to append the “uninstall” switch the end of the Beta install package in the command line.

Eg. **VS80sp1-KB922996-X86-Beta-ENU.exe /uninstall**

During the uninstall process, I received the following error – “Error 1309.Error reading from file: C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server – ENUProgram FilesTFSWeb ServicesVersion ControlWeb.Config. Verify that the file exists and that you can access it.” This is obviously a problem as this path doesn’t exist at all. I clicked the Ignore button and things seem to proceed OK.

TFS Workgroup Edition considerations

Read Dave Glover’s post about a problem he experienced with the TFS Workgroup edition and the fix that Marcel de Vries found for the problem.

Installation

The Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Quiescense GDR

The Visual Studio Foundation Server Quiescense GDR is a patch that you must install prior to installing service pack 1. The purpose of this patch is described as foolows on the Microsoft website…

“This update provides functionality that stops the Team Foundation Server services and that puts IIS and SQL Server 2005 into a state in which client requests are refused. This update also provides functionality that returns the system to a state in which the system can process client requests again. No additional action is required after you install this update. All Team Foundation Server updates that you install after this update will use this new functionality.”

Download Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Quiescense GDR (13.8Mb)

Read Knowledge Base article (KB919156)

The installation of the patch is very straight forward.

1. Double-click the VS80-KB919156-X86.exe file
   • When prompted to confirm the installation, click OK
     • Accept the license agreement
       • Once complete, click on OK.</ol>

         Visual Studio Team Foundation Server SP1

       1. Double-click the VS80sp1-KB926738-X86-ENU.exe file and follow the prompts.

        TROUBLES

       Well the next dialog box was certainly NOT what I was expecting. I have received a dialog stating…

       “The upgrade patch cannot be installed by the Windows Installer service because the program to be upgraded may be missing, or the upgrade patch may update a different versino of the program. Verify that the program to be upgraded exists on your computer and that you have the correct upgrade patch.”

       Looks like I’m off to scan through the installation logs now. I will come back and update this post as soon as I get to the bottom of this problem. (Monday 3:50pm)

       UPDATE: Read Part Two here

With the release of Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals a couple of weeks back, I am finally ready to install the RTM onto my developer machine. For developers with Visual Studio Team Suite, the Database Professionals product is available to you for free. Others will need to purchase a seperate license for this SKU.

A quick visit to MSDN Subscriber downloads reveals two downloads;

The first of these is a DVD ISO and weighs in at 1940Mb, the second download is just 19Mb and is shown is the Trial version of Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals. Fortunately, for people with Team Suite already installed, you only need to download the 19Mb trial. During installation, the installer will recognise your full version of Team Suite and will install a full (non-trial) version of the product.

Once the install is complete, don’t forget to download the latest version of the MSF Process Guidance which has been updated to include information about Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals. Once the installation is complete the following dialog box provides a convenient link for you to download the updated guidance.

And viola! Your Team Suite installation now has four members instead of three.