For awhile, I thought I was living an episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, or a Lovecraft tale. But I should start from the beginning. When Visual Studio 2008 (VS08) was released just prior to Thanksgiving, I tried briefly to download it, and quickly gave up: the download speed I was seeing was horribly low. I didn't know where the bandwidth was being restricted, but it wasn't worth continuing. As I For awhile, I thought I was living an episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, or a Lovecraft tale. But I should start from the beginning.When Visual Studio 2008 (VS08) was released just prior to Thanksgiving, I tried briefly to download it, and quickly gave up: the download speed I was seeing was horribly low. I didn’t know where the bandwidth was being restricted, but it wasn’t worth continuing.As I blogged at the time but didn’t explain, I decided to wait for the DVD to ship from MSDN. As I had blogged a few weeks earlier, I was planning to set up a new computer for VS08; my thinking was that I didn’t want to disturb my working production Visual Studio 2005 (VS05) installation. Then, in a surprise move, Doug Dineley asked me to write the Visual Studio 2008 review for InfoWorld. I let Microsoft’s PR firm know that I had the assignment, and asked for reviewer’s materials, including a Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite DVD.That’s when it started to get weird. The first overnight package that Microsoft sent me never arrived. The second package arrived with nothing but a DVD and a business card; a key for it came by e-mail. The hand-written label on the DVD said “Visual Studio 2008” but didn’t specify the edition.I thought about making an image backup of the hard disk. I thought about driving over to CompUSA and picking up a bargain system before they closed their doors. I thought about calling the product manager who had burned the disk. I didn’t actually do any of those things: I ran the installation and entered the key I had received. The installation was relatively uneventful, given that it was side-by-side with VS05: only one package failed, and it wasn’t one that I was planning to review. There were two problems, however. First, it was VS08 Professional, not Team Suite, which meant that I wouldn’t be able to review the additional Team System features. Second, the key was for a 90-day trial, which meant that I wouldn’t be able to use this installation to review other products in the VS08 “ecosystem” later on.When I let the PR people and the Microsoft product manager know the situation, I also raised the issue of whether there were VSTS features that required an installation of Team Foundation Server (TFS). That was a problem for me because I don’t have any computers in my office that run server operating systems: I would either have to install TFS on a remote server or in a Virtual PC.Not a problem: they’d send another package with a full VSTS DVD and a permanent license key. When it arrived, however, it wouldn’t install: the setup program complained of an invalid digital signature and stopped. More fun ensued: by this point most of Microsoft had disappeared for Christmas vacation, and the product manager couldn’t find the right people to diagnose this problem. He suggested that I uninstall VS08 Pro and try again to install VSTS; not only didn’t that help, it broke my VS05 installation to the point of unusability.He ended up giving me a Quick Help number and telling me to call Product Support Services. After half an hour on hold and two hours doing guided experimentation, the verdict was that the DVD had a CRC error and should be replaced.Meanwhile, he found someone on the installation team to help me fix VS05. The magic formula was to run a VS05 repair from the original install DVD, and then reapply the VS05 SP1 patch. This largely fixed the problem, although there was some weirdness about .NET Framework 2.0 that turned out to not matter. The one remaining, nagging problem was that my code signing no longer worked. The VS product manager shipped me a full retail VSTS box; it never arrived. The VSTS/TFS product manager burned me a Visual Studio Team Suite/Team Foundation Server Virtual PC DVD; it arrived in two days rather than overnight, but it, too had a CRC error. He burned another DVD, tested it to make sure it worked, and shipped it to me overnight: it never arrived.Friday evening, at home, I downloaded VS08 Professional from MSDN to my Vista x64 laptop. Once I found and installed Daemon Tools for the Vista x64 system so that I could install directly from the ISO image, VS08 installed fine: by Saturday morning I was fixing one small but annoying first-run problem by re-running Devenv as Administrator.Sunday morning I went to my office and kicked off downloads of VSTS and TFS trials from MSDN. This time the download proceeded with the full rated bandwidth. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to install VSTS properly this time from the ISO image, and that the key from the defective DVD will upgrade the downloaded installation from trial to permanent. I’m also hoping that I can install TFS from the ISO image into a Virtual PC, and use the same trick for the upgrade. While I was at the office, I wrote a note for the interior designers downstairs in my building who have gotten some of my packages in the past, letting them know that I was missing a few more packages, and asking them to call me if they found them. I left it stuck to their door.I think I’ve reversed the curse. Knock on wood for me, would you? And please don’t change your socks… Software Development