How to uninstall Visual Studio 2008

Posted on Jan 10, 2011

Step 1. Uninstalling Visual Studio 2008

Some article suggests doing Step 2 first which is described below, but the order does not matter, to my experience. You can uninstall VS2008 by using one of the following channels.

  • Add or Remove Programs (Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP) or Programs and Features (Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008)
  • Setup.exe in the VS2008 installation media

When you do this, however, you may receive the following error message:

A problem has been encountered while loading the setup components. Canceling setup.

This problem occurs when you install an update that adds a new Windows Installer feature to VS2008, as described in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 959417 . To resolve this problem, patch VS2008 with the latest service pack. Install something to uninstall… Irony, huh?

Step 2. Uninstalling components installed with VS2008

Removing VS2008 related components can be done in two ways.

1. Automatic removal

Get UninstallTool (or dowload from this page) and run it. It removes all components installed with Visual Studio 2008. However, it works only for the English version and does not uninstall the components shared with other packages.

2. Manual removal

Open Add or Remove Programs (Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP) or Programs and Features (Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008), and uninstall with the following order.

  1. Remove “Microsoft SQL Publishing Wizard”.
  2. Remove “Crystal Reports Basic for Visual Studio 2008”.
  3. Remove “Crystal Reports Basic 64-bit Runtime for Visual Studio 2008 (x64)”. This step is required only if Visual Studio is installed on a 64-bit computer.
  4. Remove “Microsoft Windows SDK for Visual Studio 2008 SDK Reference Assemblies and IntelliSense”.
  5. Remove “Microsoft Windows SDK for Visual Studio 2008 .NET Framework Tools”.
  6. Remove “Microsoft Windows SDK for Visual Studio 2008 Win32 Tools”.
  7. Remove “Microsoft Windows SDK for Visual Studio 2008 Headers and Libraries”.
  8. Remove “Microsoft Windows SDK for Visual Studio 2008 Tools”.
  9. Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Remote Debugger”. This step is required only if Visual Studio is installed on a 64-bit computer.
  10. Remove “Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition”.
  11. Remove “Microsoft SQL Server Native Client”.
  12. Remove “Microsoft Device Emulator version 3.0”.
  13. Remove “Windows Mobile 5.0 SDK R2 for Smartphone”.
  14. Remove “Windows Mobile 5.0 SDK R2 for Pocket PC”.
  15. Remove “Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 For Devices”.
  16. Remove “Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 Design Tools”.
  17. Remove “Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5”.
  18. Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System Runtime”.
  19. Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office system (version 3.0 Runtime)”.
  20. Remove “Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 3.5”.
  21. Remove “Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP2”.
  22. Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio”.
  23. Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio Web Authoring Component”.
  24. Remove “Microsoft Document Explorer 2008”.
  25. Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 64bit Prerequisites”. This step is required only if Visual Studio is installed on a 64-bit computer.

Step 3. Uninstalling the .NET framework (optional)

The version of .NET framework installed with VS2008 is 3.5. Some language packs might be installed together, which you may want to remove, too. Of course, you should not remove .NET framework, if you have other packages dependent on it.