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I am really struggling once I need to set up my development enviroment again (it's not just one computer, it's three, unfortunately). I need hours and hours to make it work. Sometimes it's this fault, sometimes another one. Actually it's a long way of try and error, until it works - sometimes it's a longer journey, sometimes it's not. My installation order is as follows:

  1. Windows 7

  2. Drivers

  3. Office 2010 with SP1

  4. Visual Studio 2010

  5. Visual Studio 2010 SP1

  6. SQL Management Studio 2008 R2

  7. Anti Spyware Tools

  8. Now I put my computer on the internet

  9. I download all the available Windows Updates, till there aren't any more updates

  10. Now follows stuff like Chrome, Directx, Adobereader etc.

    Now the Rest of my required development tools is getting installed:

  11. Silverlight Tools

  12. Silverlight Toolkit

  13. IdeaBlade DevForce

  14. Async CTP

  15. IIS Components

  16. Telerik RadControls + JustMock

  17. ReSharper

But anyhow. Sometimes I start my Visual Studio and it tells me that the newest Silverlight SDK isn't installed (solution: uninstall Silverlight Tools and reinstall it). Sometimes the async keywords in front of methods seem to be illegal. So I uninstall the Async CTP package and Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and reinstall both. Sometimes it still doesn't work and I do this again and then it works. You know, that can be really painfull and consume heaps of time. Do you see any major mistakes I do? I think all those errors and reinstalls contribute an unclean and messy installation or am I wrong with that?

Community
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2 Answers2

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Build the machine, get it right, then take an image using one of the image tools. In future, use that image to re-install the machine from scratch?

EightBitTony
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  • what about VM Ware? And another question: do you think all that try and error stuff results in a messy installation? –  May 09 '12 at 11:58
  • Shouldn't really have converstions in comments, if you're working in a virutalised environment, it's even easier, take a snapshot when you've built your environment and revert to that when you need to rebuild it. As for messy installation - that's a question for SuperUser, I just think you're wasting your time doing the same install over and over. – EightBitTony May 09 '12 at 12:01
  • Okay that seems legit. Is the *installation order* question also part of SuperUser? –  May 09 '12 at 12:28
  • It's a grey area, ServerFault is for 'Server and Business Workstation operating systems, hardware, software and virtualization' but I think the spirit of that is 'I'm managing 200 workstations ...' not 'my individual workstation is odd' which is more a SuperUser focus. – EightBitTony May 09 '12 at 13:02
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Make your own custom Windows 7 install, with all your tools integrated. Here is a place to start -> http://www.rt7lite.com/