Share via

vs_setup.msi could not be opened

  • Article

Question

Tuesday, October 24, 2006 10:51 PM | 1 vote

I'm having a problem installing installing Visual Studio 2005.  When it pops up the first screen on the waizrd and popup appears saying "The Windows Installer package: d:\vs_setup.msi could not be open"  Any suggestions?

All replies (22)

Tuesday, October 24, 2006 11:06 PM âś…Answered | 1 vote

firstly have you read this:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=778624&SiteID=1

this may/may not help you in resolving the problem.

 

Secondly, have you tried to install it from another DVD drive? What about a different computer? Same problem?

Thirdly, have you been able to create an image of this media, using something like nero burning ROM for example, then mounting this using a Virtual CD tool and running setup from the harddisk?

 

Tuesday, January 9, 2007 11:18 PM | 2 votes

I had this same problem. I was able to repair the problem by using the Windows Install Clean Up utility (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/290301) to remove ONLY the visual studio 2005 professional installer. I also renamed the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0 to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0RightOut. And renamed the "Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8" directory to "Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8_rightout". Then it re-installed perfectly.

Thursday, October 18, 2007 2:46 AM | 1 vote

Just a bit more information on the (possible) cause and fix for the previous problem.

Symptoms:
(1) When Control Panel "add/remove software" is used  with Visual Studio Express or Visual Studio 8.0 then the following message appears:
   

"... problem has been encountered while loading the setup components visual studio"

(2) When setup.exe is run form the disk (or ISO disk) then the following message (eventually) appears:

     (drive letter):\vs_setup.msi could not be opened

Possible Cause:

Installing Visual Studio Express over Visual Studio 8

Fix:

As described in previous post ie:

  (1) Rename the Visual Studio directories to something else (ie. add REMOVE to the folder name)

  (2) rename the following Register entry using REGEDIT (use with care!)

       HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0  (ie. change \8.0 to \8.0REMOVE)

  (3) Download the Windows Install Clean Up utility at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/290301

       Use this software to 'clean up' anything with Visual Studio in the name.

  (4) Reinstall the Visual Studio software

Worked for me! And that was after 2 days of trying everything else from loading with Virtual disks to getting fresh copies of the software.

 

Wednesday, October 31, 2007 4:35 PM

I've tried that but couldn't reinstall or uninstall VS 2005. Is there any other way?

Wednesday, January 30, 2008 7:20 PM

I inherited a lap top and am now trying to remove visual studio 2005 professional edition - enu.  I am getting the vs_setup.msi could not be opened.  I do not have the install disks and was wondering if there is such a file, where it is and how I might download it.

 

Monday, February 4, 2008 11:28 PM

I was having the same issue when trying to load a trail version of Vision Studio 05.  This allowed me to get past the error message for the re-install but now it's saying I have a trail version already loaded and I need to uninstall it before I can reinstall it.  However, when I try to uninstall it I'm getting the same error message "vs_setup.msi could not be found."  So how do I uninstall the trail version so I can re-install it?

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 2:42 PM

 

Thanks for the tip HallCrash.  I had the same vs_setup.msi problem, and your clear concise directions solved it for me.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 5:07 PM

 

I had this same error but for a differnet reason. Basically I'd downloaded the image file to my local PC and I needed to install it to a server through terminal services. So I renamed the .img to a .iso and mounted it. I made my local drive resources available through terminal services and just tried to install VS2005 on the remote server through the relevant drive mapping and it would start the install and stop after about a minute with the error mentioned in the subject.

However I found that if I shared the mounted drive with standard windows filesharing and access it over the network via this standard network share (instead through terminal services local resource mapping) it allowed me to install everything without error.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 5:43 PM

I have the same error.

I wanted to change the directory name from 8.0 to something else but I did not find any 8.0 in the visual studio directory in the registry key. It has 3.5 7 9.0.
Can any one help me out.......

Thursday, August 28, 2008 2:33 PM

Any luck with your problem.  I have the same problem as you.  I believe the 7.0 is Visual FoxPro product, not sure what the 9 entry is.
What a pain this is!!!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009 9:23 AM

Same error when trying to install VS 2003 from a dvd being hosted as a local resource in remote desktop. Resolution access the files with a UNC path - installed no probs.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009 4:02 PM

Thanks to HallCrash and Jamon for the great advice. My issues was "vs_setup.msi could not be opened" when trying to reinstall VS 2008 and I was completely stuck. I'm now up and running again!

Ken

Friday, August 28, 2009 1:29 PM

Although I did not have the registry entries listed by hallcrash, there is a Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 RC that (after disabling my AV) would allow me to correct the platform that allows the software to install.

http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx

Thursday, October 15, 2009 6:44 AM

Thank you Jamon! I've had a failed Windows update for VS that completely messed up my install. You described exactly the symptoms I got, and your solution fixed it.

Friday, February 19, 2010 10:43 AM

There is an associated problem reported at http://forums.asp.net/t/1526228.aspx

Thursday, August 26, 2010 6:52 AM

I had this issue with VS2008 (with SP1). The reported path was c:\program files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\vs_setup.msi.

I discovered that the original installation location was from a mapped drive that no longer existed. I re-established the mapped drive so the original install path was correct again, and it then worked.

I found the original install path by searching the registry for "vs_setup.msi", and came to a key called "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products\01CA127634731F831B870CCEC6A91480\SourceList".

Sadly, when I tried to repair install VS, it had numerous failures.... might need an uninstall....

 

Wednesday, October 19, 2011 9:59 AM

I just would like to add that this message is generated as well when you try extracting an iso (for Visual Studio 2010 , in this case),  with WinRAR. and run setup in the resulting folder/Setup/setup.exe. However when I used Deamon Tools to mount the image it worked out fine.

So someone from WinRAR may want to comment on this. Hope this helps.

Friday, October 28, 2011 10:14 PM

This was a godsend.  This worked perfectly for me.

 

Thank you

Friday, October 28, 2011 10:17 PM

This was a godsend.  It worked perfectly for me.

 

Thank you

Friday, October 28, 2011 10:20 PM

This was a godsend.  It worked perfectly for me.

 

Thank you

Friday, October 28, 2011 10:20 PM

This was a godsend.  It worked perfectly for me.

 

Thank you

Wednesday, March 28, 2012 4:52 AM

I am getting this problem when trying to install SQL Server 2012. It asks me for vs_setup.msi for VS 2010 Ultimate - ENU. I can not find the files and 2 files I found with this name do not work.

What should I do?

For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Becker's Law

My blog