Orcas Trial Manouevres

I thought I’d install Orcas. I have a fresh, clean installation of Vista Ultimate (running under Parallels.) So, I downloaded the Professional Edition of Beta 2. In Parallels, you can connect the CD/DVD drive to an image file, which is what I did. Started up Vista, ran the setup and this happened:

Is it asking too much to have some information in the dialog box about what failed? (Digging through the log file that is squirrelled away in your local user temp folder, it seems to be launching the UI Manager, whatever that may be, that is failing.) The only reference I’ve found to others having this specific issue is Windows Installer 3.1 not being installed. I tried that – the download page seems to suggest it isn’t for Vista. And it fails anyway. In trawling around and wasting a couple of hours, I’ve discovered that there are a number of different ways in which the Orcas install can fail. I see now why the VPC distribution is provided.

Another painful install experience from the people who brought you Visual Studio 2005 SP1.