Why does Visual Studio 2010 install components when I build a Visual Studio 2008 solution?

Question

I have VS2008 and VS2010 isntalled on the same development machine, When I build (or rebuild) my Visual Studio 2008 solution, I get a few dialogs: "Please wait while Windows configures Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium".

What is this linkage and how can I sever it?

Answer 1

That's what happens when Windows Installer does a repair. ( aka Resilency ). Visual Studio is accessing a Key File ( probably COM server ) of one of the installed components and MSI is detecting it as not properly installed and trying to fix it before returning control to visual studio to actually use the component.

You'll have to use Event Viewer to know the product and component ID being detected as broken and then use tools like Orca to find out what physical file that is. Solve that problem and the repairs should go away.