Visual Studio 2008

[SSFC]

We installed visual studio 2008 here back in September and it has been a PITA! Firstly we had a problem getting the thing to run under a student account.

First we had to modify our mandatory profile (Pretty much expected). Then open up access to student home drives so students could save and run .exe files from them. We then got a message each time it loads saying 'configuring for first time use'. We got round this by locking down the settings file on the student home drive. (Thanks to Edugeek for the solution to some of these)

After all this the teacher is still reporting a bunch of problem regarding student work not being able to find modules and various other error messages.

I have a gut feeling these will be due to a combination of our mandatory profiles, locking the setting file and user error.

I was just wondering if anyone else has installed this program on a Windows XP network using mandatory profiles and if so what config options they used to eliminate as many error messages as possible whilst maintaining a secure environment.

[User3204]

I don't have mandatory profiles, since moving from Windows 98... but I am planning to start again.

We do use Visual Studio though, (not sure what version) I have had to make the "programmers" added to a group, so that I can make them the local power users, I had to create a specific Software Restriction policy (only available to the programmers), which allows them to run .exe from their p:\Computing\ folder.

We did a complete install of the Studio on the machine, not via GPO/MSI. So all the modules are installed.


Does it work for you ? Or for users with mandatory profile AND admin access ?

[powdarrmonkey]

We do use Visual Studio though,

*drools* I wish I could afford it, but I've just had to replace my phone and my router in the same month

[kmount]

*drools* I wish I could afford it, but I've just had to replace my phone and my router in the same month

The Visual Studio Express versions are free and are pretty feature packed.

[powdarrmonkey]

The Visual Studio Express versions are free and are pretty feature packed.

Which I use, but I'm outgrowing rapidly.

[kmount]

Ah, that's a shame.

You can get hold of VS 2008 on an education license for about £80 if you can spare that in your budget. I opted to buy it for the developer in my team but he seems quite happy flitting between that and express with msdn.

[powdarrmonkey]

Ah, that's a shame.

You can get hold of VS 2008 on an education license for about £80 if you can spare that in your budget. I opted to buy it for the developer in my team but he seems quite happy flitting between that and express with msdn.

Ah, I'll look at that. I did suggest it to the boss, but he didn't seem to think it worth £800 retail

[PiqueABoo]

Which I use, but I'm outgrowing rapidly.

I used to spend all day in the company of earlier versions of VS and I'm happy enough with VSE 2K8. Depends what you're up to I suppose.. what doesn't VSE do for you?

[srochford]

Visual Studio 2008 Professional is free to most students - check out Microsoft Dreamspark for a whole raft of stuff

Another way of getting VS (and just about every other bit of MS software!) is the MSDN Academic Alliance. this does cost money but it's not much - details on the MS web site.

[SSFC]

We have done the same as you so much as the students have their own group which is allowed to save and run .exe files from their home drive.

The 'Configuring at start up' message is due to the mandatory profiles but to stop it we have had to stop the student being able to save changes to the settings file (also on their home drive). This causes an error when exiting VS which tells the user the environment settings cannot be changed. We can live with this but with the other error messages popping up I was wondering if anyone knew if this could cause other problems.

At the moment the programming students have no more access rights than other students. Is making them power users the only option?

Is moving to VS express an easier option? Is that what most colleges are using?