Cannot install silverlight 4 tools on visual studio 2010 sp1

Question

I've installed Visual Studio 2010 (fresh install), then applied the SP1. Now I've tried to install the silverlight 4 tools, but i'm getting a strange error message :

"Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Web Developer Express 2010 or Visual Phone Developer Express 2010 that matches the language version of Silverlight Tools 4 must be installed before installation of Silverlight Tools can continue. Silverlight Tools is available in other languages at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=177432.

The Visual Web Developer feature for Visual Studio 2010 must be installed before installation can continue."

I've triple checked and there's no language conflict. Browsing the web, some guys have the same error, but there are some MSDN posts that say that with SP1 you don't need to install silverlight tools because they're already bundled with SP1, but that's not the case here, I don't have any project templates in VS for silverlight, and the tools aren't installed. Any ideas??

Answer 1

Found out what happened

I installed first Visual Studio, and removed some components that I thought wouldn’t be necessary (c++, f#, etc). I also removed visual web developer tools (shouldn’t have done that… you’ll see why in a minute).
After that, I installed Service Pack 1. Then, when trying to install the Silverlight 4 tools, I got an strange error message and I couldn’t continue. After searching the web, I found out that the SP1 for VS2010 comes with the Silverlight 4 tools bundled, and it should be installed by it.
The problem comes here : since I didn’t have my VS installation with the web developer tools installed, the SP1 installer just disregarded the Silverlight tools installation. And since Microsoft’s Silverlight 4 toolkit installer is buggy (if you have SP1 for VS2010 you just get this weird error and can’t continue), I was stuck.
How did I solve it? Add web developer tools to VS2010, and reapply SP1. It’s a much faster solution than uninstalling SP1, installing Silverlight 4 tools and reinstalling SP1. Let’s hope that Microsoft grows aware of this situation, and upgrades their Silverlight tools installer to be a little more clever in the future so we don’t have to be doing these workarounds

Answer 2

According to Microsoft you shouldn't need to install it but unfortunately it does contain some components that are not included in Visual Studio 2010 SP1. In order to work around this you can extract the Silverlight 4 tools installer with 7zip and then install the missing components (notably FSharpRuntimeSL4.msi) manually.

Answer 3

The VS 2010 Service Pack 1 has SilverLight Toolkit install as default. You don't need to install the SilverLight tool anymore.

Answer 4

I got tired of many threads discussing that and no real solution, at least o pass through the error complaining the VS2010 version/language.

I downloaded the Silverlight4_tools.exe, and started from command line passing the option /X

SilverLight4_Tools.EXE /X

It will ask me a place to extract the files. I set a dir, and from there I run:

silverlight_sdk.msi
RiaServices.msi

After that I could able to remove the old

using System.Web.Ria;
using System.Web.Ria.ApplicationServices;

and replace them with

using System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Hosting;
using System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Server.ApplicationServices;

Answer 5

Thought I propose a bit more detail about installing FSharpRuntimeSL4.msi manually... for myself this alone did not fix the issue. I needed the Silverlight 4 Toolkit 9April 2010)

First if you had the SilverLight 5 runtime at some point you will have to remove it.

Then extract the Silverlight4_Tools 4 files as proposed above. I had to run everything to finally get an old solution to compile properly:

1. FSharpRuntimeSL4.msi
2. SilverlightTools_Package.msi
3. silverlight_developer.exe
4. RiaServices.msi
5. VS10-KB982218-v4.exe

After that I was able to install the April update.

Answer 6

Maybe a tip for some of us. Install or repair MSXML6. We were struggling getting the SL4 projects loaded in VS2010 SP1. Uninstalled all SL4 components... reinstalled SP1... recovered VS2010... and all other combinations, nothing worked. Installing the MSXML6 solved our issue.

Answer 7

Install SP1 and then try to create a silverlight project. It displays an error. There is a link on the dialogue box. When you click it, it installs a something other than Silverlight4_Tools.exe. It actually says something about silverlight 5 ... but silverlight 5 is not added. If you install silverlight 5 ... you can still choose silverlight 4.

Answer 8

If you are trying to install the Lync SDK it will not recognise SP1 as a valid alternative for the Silverlight 4 tools. In this instance you will need to uninstall SP1, install the Silverlight 4 Tools and the Lync SDK before installing SP1 again.

Answer 9

**Maybe a tip for some of us. Install or repair MSXML6. We were struggling getting the SL4 projects loaded in VS2010 SP1. Uninstalled all SL4 components... reinstalled SP1... recovered VS2010... and all other combinations, nothing worked. Installing the MSXML6 solved our issue.**

Along these lines, I found that the combination of Visual Studio 2010 with SP1, and Silverlight 4 in either Vista or Windows 7 does not coexist well with the latest (December 2012) Silverlight 5 browser plug ins. The "solution"--at least for me it works--is to remove Silverlight 5 from your system as a browser client plug in, then install the SL Developer package that comes up when you try and create a new SL project and things are missing. This will work to allow you to develop in SL 3/4 and .NET 4.0, but now you're missing the SL browser plug in so you cannot surf the net and visit SL sites [UPDATE: it's mysteriously back, so indeed I can surf the net]. A minor setback since I develop in a virtual OS and go back and forth to the real OS, where I have SL in the browser but don't develop there. A bug perhaps, though I also don't have all the Microsoft Updates either... This is what happens when a framework stops getting supported?

Answer 10

Further to https://stackoverflow.com/a/9146742/427684 I think this is what he was referring to

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=168436

Which currently takes you here;

Microsoft® Silverlight® 5 Tools for Visual Studio® 2010 SP1

Answer 11

I had the same problem. Installer of silverlight4 tools has file ParameterInfo.xml (if you have only .exe file then unzip it). It describes system requirements.

In my situation installer requires version of VS2010 "10.0.30319", but in register was other version (10.0.40219). I edited version in register, installed tools and wrote first version in register.

May be your problems are not the same (not version of VS). Check other requirements of this file.