Upgrading Visual Studio 2010 RC to RTM/Retail/Final

Question

I have the RC build of VS2010 installed on my computer. Now that the RTM build is out, I want to upgrade.

Aside from the main Visual Studio package and .NET Framework 4,

Answer 1

The procedure for upgrading to RTM will be the same for both RC and beta machines. You need to uninstall everything that has the name "Visual Studio 2010" in your Control Panel: Uninstall Programs window. If you start by uninstalling the main VS 2010 package, most of the others will be taken out automatically by the RC uninstall (beta not so much). They won't update the Uninstall Programs list, but when you click on them after uninstalling the main VS 2010 package, uninstall will report "This has already been uninstalled".

Uninstall in this order:

1. Uninstall all the VS 2010 parts
2. Uninstall the .NET Framework Multitarget package.
3. Reboot
4. Uninstall the .NET Framework client package
5. Reboot

You're now ready to install the VS 2010 RTM product.

It's critical to save the .NET framework uninstall as the last step because the .NET Framework is needed to uninstall many of the "higher in the food chain" components. If you remove the .NET framework too soon, you won't be able to uninstall the other components.