Visual Studio 2008 Install Order

Well, after many problems, I reinstalled Windows 7 from scratch and got everything working.

(My problems mainly are because of a bug with x64 Windows + x64 SQL with x86 Visual Studio)

It is really hard to find a good guide so if anyone is interested the following is what I did and got it all working without any problems.

1. Install Windows 7 RTM
2. Perform all Windows 7 updates.
3. Install Visual Studio 2008 (Team Suite)
4. Install Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Update
5. Install SQL Server Express Edition 2008 SP1*
6. Install SQL Server 2008 Management Studio Express
7. Install SQL Server 2008 SP1 Update**
8. Install Visual Studio Hotfix 957944

And all done! Everything working without any problems!

* As much as I wanted to use the Advanced edition with Text Search, BI tools and reporting services, I just need to use SQL, I don't need anything advanced. I always seem to mess around with things I do not need! This time I just wanted to keep it simply and this works.

** Management Studio Express 2008 is not available to download with SP1 already applied, I tried running it and it seems to be fine - I cannot see anything that running the SP1 update actually improves, however when looking at the version numbers, it does get upgraded whilst the SQL 2008 instance previously installed remains untouched.

I was searching for ages for a guide like this but could not find anything up to date. I have done a lot of testing inside VMs, but this is what I came up with. I hope it helps someone out there!