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Don’t install Async CTP and ASP.NET MVC 3 RC on the same PC

After returning from TechEd Berlin this Friday, I downloaded and install the recent release of the ASP.NET MVC 3 RC build.  Everything seemed fine, until I tried to debug something inside Visual Studio. I couldn’t do any kind of useful debugging.

I found out on Scott Guthrie’s blog that it’s a known issue caused by installing both ASP.NET MVC 3 RC and C#/VB Async CTP. At this moment it isn’t possible to have both the Async CTP and the ASP.NET MVC 3 RC installed on the same machine at the same time.  You instead need to choose one or the other right now – installing both will cause problems.

To fix this, go to Add/Remove Programs and uninstall both the ASP.NET MVC 3 RC build (including the VS Tools components for it) and the Async CTP. Once you’ve uninstalled both your machine will be back to a clean state and working fine.  You can then choose to install either the Async CTP or ASP.NET MVC 3 RC and it will work fine.

Async CTP Uninstall Instructions

The Microsoft Visual Studio Async CTP is installed as two updates:

1) .NET Framework 4.0 update called “.NET Framework Async CTP”
2) Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 update called “Microsoft Visual Studio Async CTP”

To uninstall go to Control Panel > Programs and Features > View installed updates. You will need to uninstall both updates.

ASP.NET MVC 3 RC Uninstall Instructions

To completely uninstall MVC 3 RC, you actually need to uninstall all of the following:

  • Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 3
  • Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 3 - Visual Studio 2010 Tools (only installed when you have Visual Studio 2010)
  • Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 3 - VWD Express 2010 Tools (only installed if you have Visual Web Developer 2010 Express)
  • Microsoft ASP.NET Web Pages
  • Microsoft ASP.NET Web Pages - Visual Studio 2010 Tools (only installed when you have Visual Studio 2010)
  • Microsoft ASP.NET Web Pages - VWD Express 2010 Tools (only installed if you have Visual Web Developer 2010 Express)
  • NuGet
  • Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 -  (KB2385361) (only installed when you have Visual Studio 2010)
  • Update for Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2010 Express -  (KB2385361) (only installed if you have Visual Web Developer 2010 Express)

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