Upgrading Visual Studio 2010 RC to RTM/Retail/Fina

Question

I have the RC build of VS2010 installed on my computer. Now that the RTM build is out, I want to upgrade.

Aside from the main Visual Studio package and .NET Framework 4, what else should I remove before I install the RTM build in order to minimize potential breakage/conflicts? VS2010 installs a whole bunch of ancillary packages and I'm not sure which ones have been upgraded between RC and RTM.

(Extra credit: I've got another machine that is still running Beta 2. Would the procedure be the same?)

Answer 1

the official RC readme from microsoft: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=6&ved=0CCUQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.microsoft.com%2Fdownload%2FA%2FF%2FF%2FAFFE9A0D-E43C-4402-99C1-DD4E0E58AB60%2FVS2010RCReadme.htm&rct=j&q=VS2010RCReadme.htm&ei=zCTUS6CcE-OfOMKl4NYN&usg=AFQjCNECDmZMNzj0y-HXNCLQkCnP26BwDg

click on the #Uninstalling details or follow this: 2. Uninstall all instances of Visual Studio 2010 products (for example, Visual 2010 Ultimate).

3. Uninstall other installed supporting products, in the specified order. (Ignore items that are not present on the computer.)

   a. The .NET Framework 4 Language Pack

   b. The .NET Framework 4 Extended (reboot, if prompted)

   c. The .NET Framework 4 Client (reboot, if prompted)

Answer 2

Remove anything that have any combination of "Visual" and "2010" in its name. Also remove any "Framework 4" packages. Remove also anything with the following words in its title - ("Windows Phone" && "CTP"), "XNA 4", "Silverlight 4", "Blend 4", "F# 2.0" and "WCF RIA Services".

Answer 3

The procedure for upgrading to RTM will be the same for both RC and beta machines. You need to uninstall everything that has the name "Visual Studio 2010" in your Control Panel: Uninstall Programs window. If you start by uninstalling the main VS 2010 package, most of the others will be taken out automatically by the RC uninstall (beta not so much). They won't update the Uninstall Programs list, but when you click on them after uninstalling the main VS 2010 package, uninstall will report "This has already been uninstalled".

Uninstall in this order:

1. Uninstall all the VS 2010 parts
2. Uninstall the .NET Framework Multitarget package.
3. Reboot
4. Uninstall the .NET Framework client package
5. Reboot

You're now ready to install the VS 2010 RTM product.

It's critical to save the .NET framework uninstall as the last step because the .NET Framework is needed to uninstall many of the "higher in the food chain" components. If you remove the .NET framework too soon, you won't be able to uninstall the other components.