I was really looking forward to Visual Studio SP1 and .NET framework SP1 release and resisted installing all... the betas!

However, I am really disappointed with the quality of the the installation experience. I have tried the ISO download, the full download and the bootstrapper installer. Nothing worked. I have run installation with and without running the preparation tool first. Every single install terminated with a fatal error. The log files did shed some light on the problem, but searching only revealed cryptic references to a corrupted registry key related to the installation of .NET Framework 2.0 SP2.

I would love to install SP1 on my main development machine especially for the ADO.NET features and Dynamic Data, however, I cannot sit through another futile installation attempt.

I think I can wait for either the next version or Visual Studio or for the next time I rebuild my PC and do a clean install of the SP1.

BTW, Vista's complete PC backup and restore saved my bacon twice today, rolling back my machine to its state before the "install" of VS 2008 SP1.

I think I now need to take the bull by the horns and work towards the release of CynicalLeave, the hospital leave tracking and management system.

There are some features that are still to be implemented (details later!) and the error management/logging modules to be incorporated. Hopefully committing to this on the blog will motivate me to move towards a release before April 2008. 4 months of hard work. This in addition to the other projects I am working on for clients.