Just spent the morning getting Service Pack 1 of Visual Studio 2008 installed and configured. These instructions should work for anyone who is installed the Service Pack but there are a few gotchas, especially on Vista that you need to remember when you install.

One thing to note before getting started, even on my brand new dual core / 4 GB RAM machine, this easily took over 45 minutes to install so I recommend running this unattended when you leave at night or when you know you are going to have some time because you have to keep most of your other programs closed to complete the install.

First, download the installer here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=FBEE1648-7106-44A7-9649-6D9F6D58056E&displaylang=en

You might be surprised because the installer is only 550k. Actually, this is just a bootstrapper installer that when run, downloads the entire install files list which is much larger.

Run the installer and you will see a screen something like this:

Now as the install progresses, if you are running Vista, you will see this prompt in your system tray:

DO NOT RESTART!!! Just ignore this message. A little while later, you will probably see this message:



Again, just click Postpone. If you restart, the installation will fail.

Once installed, you will probably be prompted to restart your computer and the installation should be complete. Pretty easy but a few things to remember.