The Moth

The point of this post is: do not install the Orcas March CTP side by side with VS2005 on Windows Vista.

This CTP is not meant to be installed directly on Windows Vista. It can happily be used in a VPC on Vista and it is also meant to be installed directly on XPSP2 or WS2K3. Given that Virtual PC 2007 is now free and is supported on Vista, just install it in there or grab the VPC image already built for you. You'll love it. Obviously the final version of Orcas will be supported directly on Vista and indeed so is the plan for the next Orcas drop whenever that comes. Furthermore, the final version of Orcas will side-by-side with VS2005 and while this March CTP does side-by-side, it does have some issues so, again, I would not recommend the side by side thing yet.

Now, given what I just said, you won't be wrong to call me a "fool" for actually installing Orcas on my Vista machine to side by side with my VS2005 installation. This has caused me at least 3 issues:
1. Getting NETCF installed needed some manual help from me, my device forms do not render in the designer and I also had some WM5 SDK conflict issues. If you are not doing device development, these won't affect you of course.
2. My existing installation of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition broke by the Orcas install e.g. my VS2005 excel add-in projects fail with weird compile errors. I fixed this by repairing the VSTO 2005 SE installation.
3. My Orcas properties grid is broken.
4. I haven't had this issue but others have: "Orcas" Web applications fail on Vista.

On the flip side, all my LINQ demos work great!

Once again, best option is to use the VPC image in our free VPC2007 software. Equally good option is that you install it yourself on a non-Vista machine without VS2005. Remember, it *is* a Community Technology Preview!