Well, Microsoft has been saying for weeks now that we would be
astonished by “The Goods”. “The Goods” is the DVD pack containing the
betas and latest releases of most of Microsoft software under
development.
Well, we got the pack right on Tuesday, after the opening keynotes.
With the pack we got a note stating that due to an imaging error, the
disc 2 (Visual Studio 2005) wouldn’t install. We should actually copy
the contents of the disk to the hard drive and launch the setup from
there.
Then I opened the package and guess what? One of the six disks was
missing. After going back to the materials desk, they said that it
actually was missing on all the packages and they would distribute the
missing disk today.
Then I started trying to install the contents of the disk 4, which is
WinFX and guess what? There’s no SDK there. They have sent the runtime
components and the Visual Studio tools, but missed a little part which
is the SDK. Obviously, the VS tools won’t install without the SDK.
I went to one of the “Track Lounges” to get one of the MS guys to point
me to where can I get the SDK and it was all confusion. They actually
have no idea of what is on the disks and how it is laid out. After a
while we found a lady that knew about the issue and said that Microsoft
has made available on their download web site the SDK, so I could pick
it up from there.
I found the URL for the download indeed,
(http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c20cc6c8-1f4e-4a5c-bc79-c2fe9abe69aa&DisplayLang=en).
You have two download options: one is the web installer and the other
is a full image with all the stuff. I have tried both and guess what?
The full image, when I try to launch the “WinFXSDK-x86.msi” MSI
package, it says that the file isn’t a Windows Installer package. The
second option which is the online installer, it fails to download the
files and just doesn’t work.
As I’m stubborn, I will keep trying to install the WinFX stuff, but if
I don’t manage to do it, then the stuff I wanted to do before leaving
the PDC (to be able to get MS’s staff feedback) I will not be able to
do.