How to make a Visual Studio .NET 2003 DVD

(written with Visual Studio .NET Professional 2003 in mind)

Requires: Visual Studio .NET 2003 on 6 CDs (2x Visual Studio, 1x Windows Prerequisites, 3x MSDN), and a hex editor (or other editor that can handle binary files).

Copying files

• First, create three directories whereever you plan to burn the DVD from - MSDN, VSPROD and VSWCUD1.

• Copy the contents of the Visual Studio .NET Prerequisites CD into the VSWCUD1 directory.
• Copy Visual Studio .NET CDs 1 and 2 into the VSPROD directory.
• Copy MSDN Library CDs 1, 2 and 3 into the MSDN directory.

Making changes

Here's where you'll need the hex editor - note that all file locations (which are in hexadecimal) are based on my CDs and may not necessarily be correct for you. It should be obvious if they're not, as the thing you're replacing won't be there.
|0| represents a null character, the value 0. It will usually appears as 00 in a hex editor. Other than that, all the original and replacement values are plain ASCII text.

• Changes to vs_setup.msi (in the VSPROD directory) - replace the CD names with the new DVD's name, and also one filename is too long for the Joliet spec and has to be shortened.
  • 4CF5FE - replace HelloWorld.sfl with HeloWrld.sfl|0||0|
  • 4CFF55 - replace HelloWorld.sfl with HeloWrld.sfl|0||0|
  • 6485B5 - replace VSPROD2 with VSN2003
  • 6485BC - replace VSPROD1 with VSN2003
• Also, you'll need to rename the actual file - VSPROD\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vb7\VB Samples\SFL\Console-Localization-SatelliteAssemblies_VBLocalizedHelloWorld.sfl to Console-Localization-SatelliteAssemblies_VBLocalizedHeloWrld.sfl
• Changes to msdn.msi (in the MSDN directory) - replace the CD names with the new DVD's name.
  • 327A2E - replace MSDVVSD2 with VSN2003|0|
  • 3293F9 - replace MSDVVSD1 with VSN2003|0|
  • 329401 - replace MSDVVSD3 with VSN2003|0|

Writing the DVD

All you need to do here is write the entire contents of the directory containing your 3 main directories onto a DVD, and ensure the DVD is named VSN2003.

To install

• Run D:\VSPROD\SETUP.EXE
• If any prerequisites are required - ie step 1 is highlighted, select the step and enter D:\VSWCUD1 into the path box. Click OK, and continue as normal.
• After prerequisites, continue with the main install (step 2) as normal.
• For step 3, MSDN, select the step, enter D:\MSDN into the path box when prompted, and click OK and continue as normal.

• Note - You should not at any time (other than when initially selecting steps 1 and 3) be prompted to insert a different CD. If you are, either you made a mistake somewhere, or (hopefully not) my instructions are wrong.

Simon Pollard, simonweb@ruffles.org.uk 27/08/2003