So, you want to deploy VS2008 Express? – I did (We use it in our testing VMs).

1: Download the offline installer
First things first, get the offline installer for Visual Studio 2008 Express.

2: Extract the files from the ISO
Grab whichever edition you want to deploy from the ISO you’ve just downloaded (i’m just interested in c#). Setup a a new Application in the Deployment Workbench with these files, using the following for you Quiet install command:

ixpvcs.exe /q:a /c:”msiexec /i vs_setup.msi VSEXTUI=1 ADDLOCAL=ALL REBOOT=ReallySuppress /qn”

3: Dependancies
You’ll need to add in dependancies for Windows Installer 3.1 and the .net 2.0 framework. See this article for information on how to do just that.

Just like to say thanks to Aaron Stebner who provided the basis for this on his blog. All i’ve just is update the patch for vs2008 rather than 2005.

Software Restriction Policies are a way of limiting what can be executed by a user. For more information see this page on technet. Basically, they allow you to limit what a user can run (No games etc). To create a basic Software restriction policy just follow the below guide.
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This guide focuses on VS2005 Express Edition with advanced services, though this applies to any version of SQL2005.

The first thing you’ll need to do is copy the install files to your distribution share via the Deployment Workbench. Be sure to choose a directory structure without spaces as this seems to cause problems during setup.

Once you’ve got your Application folder setup, create a file called ‘template.ini’ in the same directory and add the following contents:

[Options]
ADDLOCAL=All
INSTANCENAME=MSSQLSERVER
SQLBROWSERACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE"
SQLACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE"
AGTACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE"
ASACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE"
RSACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE"
SQLBROWSERAUTOSTART=1
SQLAUTOSTART=1
AGTAUTOSTART=0
ASAUTOSTART=0
RSAUTOSTART=0
SECURITYMODE=SQL
SAPWD=9C1_GM3Z@U*+
DISABLENETWORKPROTOCOLS=0
ERRORREPORTING=0
SQMREPORTING=0


That will install all components, and set the local SA password to ‘9C1_GM3Z@U*+’. This needs to be a complex password, or setup will fail.

Once that’s in place, save the file and use the following quiet install command:

setup.exe /qn /settings \\london.nwtraders.msft\Distribution$\Applications\Microsoft_SQL2005_Express\template.ini

If you haven’t already got them added, you’ll need to add in dependencies for the .Net Framework 2.0 and Windows Installer 3.1

For .Net 2.0 extract dotnetfx.exe, add to your applications distribution folder via the Deployment Workbench and use the following quiet install command install.exe /q

For Windows Installer 3.1 (if required) download, add to your applications distribution folder in the normal mannger and use WindowsInstaller-KB893803-v2-x86.exe /quiet as the quiet install command.

You should only need Windows Installer 3.1 if you plan on deploying it to Windows XP, so add a platform restriction (not sure what the official naming is) but choose ‘This can run only on the specified client platforms’ but on the ‘Details’ tab.