01 February, 2013

Azure hijacked my VS2010 Publish Web dialog window

Image representing Microsoft Azure as depicted...
Image via CrunchBase
01-Feb-2013

Around Wednesday of last week, I got to check on what could be new to me on the Web Development arena. I mean, I haven’t been keeping up lately with the latest releases, and so what could have been out in the world for some time, maybe a year or so already, will be new to me, since these would be my first time to encounter them.

I am reading on one book, Beginning ASP.NET 4.5 in C# and VB, and I saw that one thing I have been seeing, but keep on ignoring, is Azure – and it was mentioned in that book.

It took my curiosity by the hand, and I just found myself installing here and there.

That’s when my problem started... VS2010 Publish Web calls Azure dialog...

I was just happy finishing all of my installation, and since these are add-ons, or plug-ins, I couldn’t immediately “see” the effect of what I have just done.

When I went back to my codes using VS2010, opened up one web application, made some minor changes, and tried to publish it, lo and behold! The Publish Web Dialog Window is now an Azure dialog box, telling me to publish on Azure, and as I found out, the only way to make a publication is either by logging in with an existing account, or by creating a new one. What?!

I got these installed, by the way: Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, used for some time already, Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop, recent but not so recent, and Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web.

I am very sure that having installed the Express 2012 IDEs did not give me the problem, but I doubted that suddenly.

Troubleshooting

First thing I checked is my list of installed programs, and as I expected, and was happy enough to confirm my initial guess, is that “some” Azure programs kicked in, by design, since Azure is supposed to, I believe, be taking over some of Visual Studio’s dialog boxes and windows (Now is that right? Is my understanding right? Am I making any sense at all?) So what I did first is to uninstall these Azure programs, as selected by date of installation. I thought I was done, and things will be back to normal.
It didn’t – I still see the Azure dialog window when doing a Publish Web in VS2010.

Along with the bunch of Azure products installed in the past few days were some updates to VS2010, and even Windows itself. So I carefully checked on the list, and selected those that I think were add-ons, and uninstalled them as well.

Nope, that didn’t help; still got the problem when doing a Web Publish act.

As I needed to apply the changes I made, I have to make a choice by making a “synchronize” move, copying the modified code to the other PCs I use, and doing a web publish on these production machines. Thankfully, the change done was okay, and no untoward side effect was observed or reported.

Back to my problem: I thought that if I would uninstall VS2010, and do a reinstall, maybe that would do the trick. So that is what I did. Went through the time-consuming process of uninstalling Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, and hey, it was fast, cause only 2 items were uninstalled. Maybe nothing was left after the previous uninstallation... think so?

I restarted my machine, and went right away to reinstalling the Visual Studio 2010 suite. When it was done, I clicked on the shortcut, applied the license key, and then called up the web application. I went straight to publishing the web – and lo and behold! I would like to pull out all my hairs!

Nah, I still have the problem!

I couldn’t believe that a week has come and gone, and I was trying to solve one small problem, but I couldn’t fix it. I was thinking, I was making this troubleshooting skill of mine an asset in my job applications, but here I am, doing one simple problem, and I’m going nowhere, getting nothing done. Just running around in circles, to say the least.

Then yesterday, out of desperation, I wondered whether taking out all of the Visual Studio programs would somehow be the solution to my problem.

Well, that wondering led to doing, and since I have to go home for some urgent errand (my 2nd daughter had a high fever while in school, so I had to leave work at noon and filed that as an urgent leave of absence), I brought along my laptop, and around past 3pm, when we got home, I opened my laptop to execute the complete uninstallation of *Visual Studio*.

That took some time, especially that I had to attend to some other things here and there, and we had to eat dinner, and I have to look after the youngest while my wife looked  after our sick child – time flew so swiftly and it was night all of a sudden without my knowing it... I should say, without my noticing it...

That was last night. And while I was uninstalling the Visual Studio suites from my laptop, I have another desktop PC back in the office that I am working on, and since the desktop PC is an older model, making it the slower unit, and a fresh install at that, I said, why not I make this somehow the control unit, and find out, to confirm, that it is the Azure products, and not the Visual Studio Express 2012 products, that gave me the problem? Anyway, it would be the same steps that I will take:

Install Visual Studio 2010
Install Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop
Install Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web

The VS2010 should come first, followed by either the Web or Windows Desktop version.

So I worked on the 2 machines simultaneously, the desktop PC back in the office I’m doing remotely, while the laptop is with me at home.

True enough, installing Visual Studio 2010 first and foremost gave me back the original Publish Web dialog window. True for both desktop and laptop PCs.

I then installed Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop. When it was done, I opened up VS2010, called up the web application, invoked Publish Web command, and I got the same dialog window.

Confirmed, it is not the VS Express 2012 for Windows Desktop that caused the problem.

As a last step, I proceeded to install Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web, and when it was done, I opened up VS2010, called up the web application, invoked Publish Web command, and I still got the same, original, unaltered, Publish Web Dialog Window – 2 weeks ago was “hijacked” by Azure.

I’m back in business!

And with that, I end my recollection of my past 2 weeks’ adventure in software development.

Till then!

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