Article ID: 939400 - Last Review: October 31, 2007 - Revision: 1.2

Any files that are shared by the two editions of Visual Studio .NET 2003 SP1 or of Visual Studio .NET 2002 SP1 are deleted when you uninstall the edition of the service pack that you installed first

Consider the following scenario:

You install two editions of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) on a computer. Or, you install two editions of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2002 Service Pack 1 (SP1) on a computer.
Then, you uninstall the edition of Visual Studio .NET 2003 SP1 that you installed first. Or, you uninstall the edition of Visual Studio .NET 2002 SP1 that you installed first.

In this scenario, any files that are shared by the two editions of the service pack are deleted. This process leaves the edition of the service pack that you do not uninstall in a broken state.

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CAUSE

This issue occurs because of how shared components work in Visual Studio .NET 2003 SP1 and in Visual Studio .NET 2002 SP1.

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Service packs contain security updates that help secure the computer from vulnerabilities. Therefore, we do not recommend that you uninstall a service pack for any version of Visual Studio.

If you have to uninstall a service pack for one edition of Visual Studio for some reason, we recommend that you repair the other editions of Visual Studio that are installed on the computer.

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MORE INFORMATION

This issue occurs when you install multiple editions of Visual Studio .NET 2003 SP1 on a computer. This issue also occurs when you install multiple editions of Visual Studio .NET 2002 SP1 on a computer. However, this issue does not occur when you install any one edition of Visual Studio .NET 2003 SP1 and any one edition of Visual Studio .NET 2002 SP1 on a computer.

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