Installing VS2008 without un-installing older version?

[Duhhh]

I thought the docs said VS2008 can co-exist with older versions. I just tried to do an install (windows XP), and when I start SE2008 for the first time, I get a "file not found" dialog. Then it tells me it has a macro load error, but the directory is the OLD version (old one is C:\Program Files\Slickedit, and new one is C:\Program Files\SlickEdit 2008).

If I try to run VS2008 again, I get "unhandled win32 exception in vs.exe[336]"


 I'm a bit reluctant to un-install the old, working version before the new one works, but it looks like I have no choice.

[Phil Barila]

Do you have the old VS directory on your path, by any chance?

[Matthew]

How old is the old SlickEdit? I sometimes see problems with user-created macro files when your configuration is migrated to a new version, especially if it's a jump of several versions. Mostly this is due to changes in the Slick-C language and interpreter. But I've only ever seen it bark that it can't find or can't load the macro. I've not seen it cause a runtime exception.

You may want to go into your configuration directory and "hide" the older version(s) configuration. Just temp rename the config to something like "old_v12_config". Then delete the 13.0.x config subdirectories (SE2008 == 13.0.x) and start the new SlickEdit 2008. You'll get a clean stock config that won't try to bring over any of the previous settings or macro files.

If you still see an exception, re-run the .msi installer for SE2008 and select the "Repair" option.

[Duhhh]

The old version was 10. Even after uninstalling it, the VS2008 install failed. I scrubbed the registry of everything VS-related and cleaned up all the old config files, and now VS2008 installs without error.

[ScottW, VP of Dev]

Each new version of SlickEdit installs in a different directory by default. I don't think that was the case with v10. Also, we have (since v10) added code to have a version-specific config directory. We store very little in the registry. Even with v14, you can copy an installation of SlickEdit from one directory to another and it will still work--soemthing I do very regularly.

SlickEdit does coexist with previous versions very well. I've got 18 different installations of SlickEdit on my computer. Be sure that each is installed into a clean directory and that you are not trying to share a config directory with two different versions, and everything should work fine.