Installing Visual Basic .NET
You may own Visual Basic .NET:
- As part of Visual Studio .NET, a suite of tools and languages that also includes C# (pronounced C-sharp) and Visual C++ .NET. Visual Studio comes in three flavors: Professional, Enterprise Developer, and Enterprise Architect. Each of these versions comes with progressively more tools for building and managing the development of larger enterprise wide applications.
- As the Standard Edition, which includes a cut down set of the tools and languages available with Visual Studio .NET.
Both enable you to create your own applications for the Windows platform. The installation procedure is straightforward. In fact, the Visual Basic .NET Install is smart enough to figure out exactly what your computer requires to make it work.
The descriptions that follow are based on installing Visual Studio .NET Professional. However, all of Visual Studio .NET's languages use the same screens and windows (and hence look very similar), so you would not be seeing much that you would not see anyway.
Try It Out: Installing Visual Basic .NET:-
1] The Visual Basic .NET CD has an auto-run feature, but if the Setup screen does not appear after inserting the CD, you have to run setup.exe from the root directory of the CD. To do this, go to your Windows Start menu (usually found right at the bottom of your screen) and select Run. Then type d:\setup.exe into the Open box, where d is the drive letter of your CD drive. After the setup program initializes you will see the screen as shown in Figure 1-1.
Figure 1-1
2] This dialog box shows the order in which the installation takes place. To function properly, Visual Basic .NET requires that several components and updates be installed on your machine. Step 1 is the Windows component update, so click on the Windows Component Update link; you will then be prompted to insert the Component Update CD that came with your Visual Studio .NET disks.
3] The installation program then examines your system to see exactly which components have to be installed. Depending on the current state of your machine, this list could include any of the following items:
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Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6.0a
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Microsoft FrontPage 2000 Web Extensions Client
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Setup Runtime Files
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Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 with Service Pack 1
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Microsoft Data Access Components 2.7 with Service Pack 1
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Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1
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Microsoft Visual J# .Net Redistributable Package 1.1
| Note | :-If you don't know what some of those things are, don't worry about it. They are just Windows components that Visual Studio .NET or Visual Basic .NET requires. |
| Note:- | Depending on what components you have already installed on your machine, your list of components that require updating may be different. For reference, these are the options on a completely patched version of Windows XP Professional that includes Internet Information Services. |
6] As with most installations you will be presented with an option list of components to install (see Figure 1-3 ). You can choose to install only the features that you need. For example, if your drive space is limited and you have no immediate need for Visual C++ .NET, you can exclude it from the installation. You will also be given the chance to select the location of items (although the defaults should suffice unless your particular machine has special requirements). Any option that is not chosen at the initial setup can always be added later as your needs or interests change.
There are three sections of information given for each feature:
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The Feature properties section outlines where the required files will be installed and how much space will be needed to do this.
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The Feature description box gives you an outline of each feature and its function.
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Finally, the Space Allocation section illustrates how the space on your hard drive will be affected by the installation as a whole.
| Note | :- When you are running Visual Basic .NET, a lot of information is swapped from the disk to memory and back again. Therefore, it is important to have some free space on your disk. There is no exact rule for determining how much free space you will need, but if you use your machine for development as well as other tasks, anything less than 100MB free space should be considered a full disk. |
7] Once you have chosen all of the features you want, click Install Now! Installation will begin and you can sit back and relax for a bit. The setup time varies depending on how many features you chose to install. As a reference, the installation process took over an hour on a 650 MHz laptop computer with 256MB RAM, a 12GB hard drive, and running Windows XP Professional.When installation is completed, you will see a dialog informing you that the installation has completed.
8] Visual Studio .NET no longer includes the MSDN documentation as part of the installation. Instead it uses the separate MSDN Library installation routine. The big advantage in this is that one can always install the most current documentation regardless of what came out of your Visual Basic .NET box.
9] The MSDN Library installation is simple and straightforward and this section covers the highlights. After inserting disk one of the MSDN Library (assuming you are installing from CD) you will see the initial welcome screen.
10] This wizard interface guides you through the installation process. After gathering your License and User Information you will see the screen shown in Figure 1-4.
Figure 1-4
| Note | :-Make sure that the Integrate MSDN with Visual Studio .Net 2003 check box is checked so that Visual Studio .NET /Visual Basic .NET can find the MSDN documentation. |
11] After clicking Next, you will be allowed to select the amount of the documentation you want to install. For example, if you did not install C++ there is probably little reason to install that documentation.
| Note | :-If you have the spare hard drive space, it is a very good idea to install the full documentation. MSDN does not always include specific examples or documentation for Visual Basic .NET; therefore you may find what you are looking for under SQL Server documentation, or even C#. |
| Note | :-It is a good idea to select Service Releases to check for updates. Microsoft has done a good job of making software updates available through the Internet. These updates can include anything from additional documentation to bug fixes. You will be given the choice to install any updates via a Service Pack CD or the Internet. Obviously, the Internet option requires an active connection. Since updates can be quite large, a fast connection is highly recommended. |
Once you have performed the update process, Visual Basic .NET is ready to use. Now the real fun can begin! So get comfortable, relax, and let us enter the world of Visual Basic .NET.
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