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Deploy Visual Basic Express 2008

A UK college recently e-mailed me asking for help deploying Visual Basic Express 2008.  Here are the basic steps to extracting an MSI from the 2008 Express ISO.

  1. Download the Visual Studio 2008 Express ISO to your local system and mount it using something like MagicDisk.
  2. Locate the “VBExpress” directory and copy it somewhere locally.
  3. Run ixpvb.exe, this will extract the setup files to your local drive. Mine got extracted to:
    C:\057f3ad5975a04eeddb339635a50

    Copy the files to somewhere, and then discard the notification that you must run setup.exe to install the software. The temporary directory will be automatically removed when you dismiss the dialog.

    At this point, it’s now safe to remove the “VBExpress” directory you copied earlier.

  4. Make sure the dependencies are installed. These are: Windows Installer 3.1, .Net Framework 1.1 + SP1, .Net Framework 2.0 + SP1, .Net Framework 3.0. Reboot after they’ve been installed.
  5. Then run the command that makes it all happen.

    msiexec /i vs_setup.msi VSEXTUI=1 ADDLOCAL=ALL REBOOT=ReallySuppress /qn

    Assuming that works, you know you’re good to go.

    You should be able to then create a simple transform to set the VSEXTUI, ADDLOCAL and REBOOT properties and then deploy via Group Policy Software Installation. Be sure to make sure all your target systems have the dependencies installed.

If anyone runs into a problem leave a comment and I’ll see if we can work out where things are going wrong.

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