The Infamous 2869 Error installing the SCSF

I've been through so much pain the past two days that it would be truly criminal if I didn't share this with any other poor souls that may be out there.

I've been trying to install the Smart Client Software Factory May 2007 Release on my Vista Ultimate Parallels image, and I have been banging my head against the wall for the past two days trying *every* single permutation of pre-requisites and installation steps to get the bloody thing to work. The basic problem is after following the instructions from the Cabpedia and Codeplex installation guides, when I got to installing the SCSF MSI it would get to the last step and give me the error message I would soon become all too familiar with:

"The installer has encountered an unexpected error installing this package. This may indicate a problem with this package. The error code is 2869."

It pains me to even have to relive it in this manner.

Most of the Google results for this error message indicate some issue with UAC and elevation of privileges in Vista, with all manner of workarounds to fix it. So I tried switching the UAC on, switching it off again, installing the MSIs using msiexec as Administrator, running msiexec as Administrator from a command prompt, as a batch file, and from the VS command prompt. Nothing. I tried uninstalling the GAX Extensions and the Toolkit, and retrying the installations with all the aforementioned options. After far too many reboots and freaking out that I'd screwed things up in my Group Policy with gpedit, I tried msiexec with full logging switched on. That then gave me a glimmer of hope as I proceeded to follow a whole new set of error messages up the garden path. Still nothing.

The light on the horizon came when I did an incremental install of the options that the SCSF installer gives you, trying to find the option that generates the error. I managed to install the SCSF source via the advanced installation options, and then YES I managed to actually get something running.

The SCSF source gets installed to 'C:\Projects\SCSF Source' where you can open the GuidancePackage solution. Right, now we're getting somewhere... At which stage I think to myself all it takes to get this stuff installed is to enable the 'Guidance Package Manager' package, right-click the SmartClientFactoryPackage and select 'Register Guidance Package' option, right?

WRONG!

I'm was about to cry at this stage and I started going over all the steps that I previously had, thinking that I'd missed out on some step somewhere. The frustration was palpable to say the least. I'm just trying to build the tension here because I don't want anyone else to get to the punchline without experiencing some of the pain I had to go through.

Still with me? Good.

Anyway the error I received from the Guidance Package Registration process was something along the lines of "Registration Failed" or some other totally useless message. After some more digging around I found out I could see the VS.Net output for the 'Guidance Package Development', where I finally found the gem I was looking for:

"The project factory VisualBasic is not registered"

It turns out this error indicates that I don't have Visual Basic installed as a VS.Net option.

HAZAAAAAAH!

So I finally managed to get VB.Net installed, crossed my fingers, and tried the SCSF install for the 30th time. Incredibly it actually succeeded, and I thought to myself, "Why is this not ********ing documented?!", and realised that no-one else should have to go through this pain. I'll post this to the Cabpedia and P&P guys so that hopefully they will update their install guides as well.

Anyway I've totally forgotten why I wanted the SCSF in the first place as my brain is still too sore, but hopefully it will come to me soon.

UPDATE: Turns out I wasn't the only one that encountered this one - they've subsequently released a patch for this issue:
http://blogs.msdn.com/blaine/archive/2007/06/07/scsf-installation-patch-available-for-c.aspx