Having trouble installing Visual Studio 2011 on Windows 8 VM

Question

I'm trying to install Visual Studio 2011 on my Windows 8 Consumer Preview VM, but I am having issues.  I don't see the installation dialog.  Instead I just see a black rectangle.  The tooltips still come up, so I know the dialog is there, but I cannot see any of the controls. 

I've had similar issues with other products, but have been able to find workarounds (usually by selecting the MSI directly instead of using the launcher) but am at a loss on this one. 

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Which VM host? Both VirtualBox and VMWare player work for me.

Answer 2

Hello John,

If you use the same installer to install VS11 on another machine, will you get the same issue? Are there any error messages during your installation? And based on your above description, it seems that you will get the same issue when you install other products on that Win8 CP VM. If so, I am afraid that there may be something wrong with your Win8 VM, please reopen one new case on the Windows 8 General forum so that Win8 experts can help you further with your issue.

Thanks.

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Vicky Song [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 3

I'm using VirtualBox.  Everything except for the Visual Studio installation has been working perfectly.  I have it on a Windows 7 HP system with a total of 16 gig of ram, with 8 gig devoted to the VM.

Can you send me you Virtual Box settings?  Maybe it is just a matter of having to have the settings tweaked.

Answer 4

I have VS 11 installed on another test vm with no issues.  On my Windows 8 vm I can't get far enough to get any errors.  It displays the Visual Studio logo for a few seconds and then displays a black rectangle instead of the initial installation dialog.  I've even considered going through it on two VMs since the issue is simply that I can't see the dialog, but the controls are still there and see if I am able to kick it off that way, but I'm not sure if it is supposed to do anything different on Windows 8. 

I've tried changing the colors on Windows 8 to see if that might help, but so far not luck.

I'm not having any issues installing anything else on the VM, although most of the other software I've installed has been directly from the Microsoft store.  I installed a powershell text editor with no issues though.

Answer 5

I figured it out.  It was the Virtual Box guest additions.  The Direct X addin for this must have been causing the problem.  Once I removed them I was able to see the dialog.