Today I thought I would take another stab at the unistall process for VS 2010.  Read on for a pleasant surprise tonight.

After yesterday's frustrating brush with uninstalling Visual Studio 2010, tonight, I thought I'd give it another kick at the can.  Well, I have to say after looking at the listing of 28 programs to uninstall, IF you pick the right one first (Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 2 - ENU, which is 24 down the list when sorted by Installed On), you will quickly remove/uninstall 20 of the 28 pieces.  Not perfect BUT better than having to do each one individually!

After selecting the uninstall option, you're presented with the progress dialog.  Ok, nice, very nice, looks like that list includes a lot of the extra "stuff" that was in my other list which I didn't want to have to remove manually.  Ok, nice start.

Then ended up with this (only took about 10m or so, MUCH shorter than the install!).  Uninstall is complete!  Oh man, AWESOME NEWS IMHO!  VERY COOL  YAHOO

The only problem is, as good as THAT is, it STILL left eight pieces behind for me to mop up.  BUT!  It's much better than the 28 I was previously staring at LAST night.

(PPPSSSSSTTTTT if you're going to even THINK of suggesting I reboot, cause, well, ya know Windows likes to be stroked that way sometimes......don't......I just got back from rebooting and it didn't change that list one iota, sorry, no dice on that one).  Can you tell I'm tired of that "oh just reboot and it'll work answer?"  Ya, I got tired of that from my Java days (Oh ya, I went there!).

So next it's onto removing the remaining eight pieces.  According to James Ashley, it shouldn't matter which ones you do first, except that it does matter which ones you do LAST!  Leave the .NET Framework 4 Extended and the .NET 4 Client Profile ones last (in that order).  At this point, I just started from the top and worked my way down, uninstalling everything and going through the regular administrative checks with the customary reboot at the very end (after the .NET Client Profile, it asks for a reboot after the .NET Framework Extended but opted to skip that reboot).

After poking around the Program Files (x86 and x64 vers), and cleaned up a couple of errand Visual Studio 10 directories left behind, it seems like everything is ok.  BUT, the real test will be when I get my hands on the RC or the official gold copy.  Not sure when that'll be but stay tuned.  Now that I have VS 2010 Beta 2 off my machine, it's time to grab a coffee and get coding (back with VS 2008).