XP SP3 breaks Windows Update

As a software firm we don't typically call for technical support; however, after we installed Windows XP SP3...NO Windows Updates would succeed! There is NO error code to search on...nothing helpful to google with. So, I decided to call DELL technical support. I was pleasantly surprised to get spot on help that fixed the issue. Here is the fix in a nutshell:
wups2.dll is a COM dll that is not registered by the XP SP3 install.

You need to:

net stop the windows update service (wuauserv)
register (regsvr32) wups2.dll (\windows\system32)
net start the windows update service (wuauserv)

And... if you need DELL support ask for Ashlie Wise.

vs_setup.msi cannot be opened in 2008

You mean I CAN'T uninstall Visual Studio 2008? I had the unhappy luck of failing the VS2008 SP1 install, so I figured to uninstall and reinstall and then add back SP1. Sadly, my visions of a productive coding day disappears with this obscure error: "vs_setup.msi cannot be opened."

A bit of googling found a relevant post and after finding the appropriate installer key for "Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Standard ENU" I was able to get back to work.

Run regedit and find this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Products \E05F434F41678AE30980F28B666B79AD

Or this key if you have the professional edition (Thanks Jul!):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Products \4E1DAD7D4F54B2B398A9AE271876CEF4

Underneath that one was a folder called Patches. Within that folder was an entry called Patches of type REG_MULTI_SZ. I right-clicked and renamed to Patches_1.

Rerun the setup.exe for VS2008. Return to coding.

Workaround?: WPF XAML designer silent crash in vs2008 SP1

Maybe I’m just lucky. I hope that it is based on my developer fortune and not that Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is a piece of dunebuggy code…

I installed the newly released SP1 (I had skipped the SP1 beta1 and beta2) and then tried to open a WPF project that I had created in straight vs2008. Anytime that I was so bold as to open an XAML file in the designer, VS paused for a moment and then died.

<RANT>Forget the Vista niceties of noticing the crash and tallying the crash against the “stability” of my system. No. This is a Microsoft product. We can’t have Visual Studio show up on the list of shifty programs.</RANT>

I thought about it a bit and tried a few things. Each attempt was rewarded with a silent crash except the last:

WORKAROUND (SO FAR): Create a new WPF Window (or control). For me, this process took inordinately long, and then the new Window/Control showed up. After that point, I could easily view and edit my other XAML files in the designer. Grrr. Yay!

Update: A couple folks have also posted comments detailing how they got things to "refresh" and stop crashing:

1. Open documents in full XAML view (avoiding the crash when the control displays in the designer?) (Thanks Brad)
2. Opened AppConfig.xaml (Which is XAML but has no controls to display in the designer) (Thanks Vasco)

Update 2: A patch is available for the XAML designer in Visual Studio 2008 SP1.