Visual Studio 2008 ... and so the "relationship" begins ...
After hours and hours and hours of pure frustration with the joyful bandwidth we get in South Africa (but that's a whole other rant we've all heard a thousand times before ...) I finally managed to get the full Visual Studio 2008 Team System DVD in my grubby little paws!
My imagine my excitement upon putting the thing in my laptop and clicking autorun ...
Up comes the install screen, I select custom install and very quickly remove VB.NET (don't ask ... long story .... 
)
Click next and presto ....
I get this!
Fantastic!
And so begins the long and fruitful relationship with yet another instance of Visual Studio!
Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise. I mean come on, if it can't even install correctly is there any chance of it actually working properly?
What about the help I hear you say ...
Well I thought the same thing. Look the kind folk at Microsoft provided me a link to troubleshoot any installation problems.
But alas, once again my joy was very short lived. I clicked the link and this super useful helpful page pops up offering a whole 3 pearls of wisdom
• Use the Local Administrator account.
Um .... well yes thanks for that. Isn't this standard protocol for any Microsoft installation?
• Stop all required services and programs.
Don't even get me started with this one ....
• Clear the System\Temp folder.
Ok, this is about the only useful one. No idea why temp folder would be important if this was the first time I attempted to run the install. But who am I to question this pearl of wisdom? So I cleared out the temp folder, tried again only to be slapped in the face with the very same error message.
My notebook has never had anything that has resembled a alpha, beta or CTP on it ... I purposefully chose to wait until it RTM'd thinking that it might then be stable.
So now what?
Am I the only pure soul who is doomed?
Should I just be grateful for small mercies and continue with Visual Studio 2005 now that I finally for that stable on Vista?
Do I re-install my notebook and try again?
UPDATE:
So based on some of the comments and info received offline it would appear that the installer is moaning about not being able to install the .NET Framework 3.5 for some or other reason.
So I tried to install the dotnetfx3.5 manually from the DVD. Low and behold it failed! Examining this log file this installer created, it clearly states that it failed because Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 SP1 was not installed.
So ok, I downloaded that and tried to install it and proceed to get another error ...
.NET 3.0 SP1 is not supported on Vista!?!?!?
So 3.5 moans because 3.0 SP1 is not installed, but 3.0 SP1 says it is not supported on Vista; so does that in some roundabout way mean that 3.5 is not supported on Vista?
Maybe I have a version of Vista that got installed when the aliens abducted me and performed all sorts of horrible experiments on me and my laptop ....
UPDATE:
So ... .NET Framework 2.0 service pack 1 first hey? Ok .... Yes it was on the CD so I didn't need to download anything but once again when i try install this i get the following ...
Now i am convinced. My Vista was developed on a Friday morning after a very heavy case of phuza Thursday!