Monday, August 23, 2004
Installing SharePoint Web Part Templates
Well, its been a while since I posted something, I have just been busy with all the things that I am working on. For some reason I couldn't sleep tonight so I took on the challenge of learning development of SharePoint Web Parts.
The MSDN web site for SharePoint technologies is probably a good point for starting. So I downloaded the Web Part templates for Visual Studio .Net and ran the file which extracted the setup files to a folder. Now, when I would run the 'setup.exe' it would say that I needed Visual Studio .Net before I could install the web part templates, duh!
Well, it wasn't that simple; the problem was that I already had Visual Studio .Net 2003 installed. After restarting the setup several times I decided it was time to find out what was going on.
Searching on google I found this post at TalkAboutSoftware.com, according to which the installer was checking the following two registry keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1\Registration\PIDKEY
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1\Registration\ProductID
My computer's registry had both of these keys but they were blank. The reply to that post suggests restoring the registry, but I didn't want to do that because of it's consequences (who knows what else has been changed since the last backup?).
Still not sure what to set those to, I kept searching. After a few minutes I ended up at this post at EggHeadCafe.com. Before I move on, I must point out one thing, EggHeadCafe looks more like a graphics website than a .Net portal, just an observation :). Anyways, according to that post the solution was to reinstall (a.k.a. repair) Visual Studio .Net, which I didn't want to do either! =(
Finally I got fed up and set the above two keys to "PIDKEY" and "Visual Studio .Net" respectively and ran the setup. Guess what?!?! It actually worked!!!
According to the first post those keys might have been removed by some add-in, since thats the case I am assuming those weren't really important. So this is my solution for now, hopefully that will work if you are having the same problem. I will post an update if the registry change screws anything else up.
Now on with the SharePoint development... Oh wait, I need to get some sleep it's already 3:29am! 'night!
The MSDN web site for SharePoint technologies is probably a good point for starting. So I downloaded the Web Part templates for Visual Studio .Net and ran the file which extracted the setup files to a folder. Now, when I would run the 'setup.exe' it would say that I needed Visual Studio .Net before I could install the web part templates, duh!
Well, it wasn't that simple; the problem was that I already had Visual Studio .Net 2003 installed. After restarting the setup several times I decided it was time to find out what was going on.
Searching on google I found this post at TalkAboutSoftware.com, according to which the installer was checking the following two registry keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1\Registration\PIDKEY
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1\Registration\ProductID
My computer's registry had both of these keys but they were blank. The reply to that post suggests restoring the registry, but I didn't want to do that because of it's consequences (who knows what else has been changed since the last backup?).
Still not sure what to set those to, I kept searching. After a few minutes I ended up at this post at EggHeadCafe.com. Before I move on, I must point out one thing, EggHeadCafe looks more like a graphics website than a .Net portal, just an observation :). Anyways, according to that post the solution was to reinstall (a.k.a. repair) Visual Studio .Net, which I didn't want to do either! =(
Finally I got fed up and set the above two keys to "PIDKEY" and "Visual Studio .Net" respectively and ran the setup. Guess what?!?! It actually worked!!!
According to the first post those keys might have been removed by some add-in, since thats the case I am assuming those weren't really important. So this is my solution for now, hopefully that will work if you are having the same problem. I will post an update if the registry change screws anything else up.
Now on with the SharePoint development... Oh wait, I need to get some sleep it's already 3:29am! 'night!
