SOLVED: "Visual Studio setup cannot run in compatibility mode." error when attempting to uninstall Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

If you are having problems upgrading from Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 to Release Candidate (RC1) then hopefully this will get you back on your way.

Scenario

When trying to get rid of Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 so I could update it to the RC1 release on my home computer I ended up getting some annoying errors.

The following error message was being displayed every time I tried to click uninstall:

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setup.exe
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Visual Studio setup cannot run in compatibility mode. For more information see the 'Installing' section in the

Visual Studio Readme at "http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=143397".
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OK  
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This error cropped up for me because I tried to uninstall Visual Studio before I uninstalled Team Foundation Server. This caused the uninstall to abort which made Windows think that the uninstaller had problems. It tries to be helpful by setting the setup.exe to run in compatibility mode but as the error message above indicates - you cant run the Visual Studio setup application in compatibility mode.

So I turned to the documentation suggested in the link above but it didn't make it clear where I was supposed to find the setup.exe or how exactly I could change it. This article aims to fill that gap.

Solution

The setup.exe application can be found in the following location:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 {EDITION} Beta 2 - ENU

The edition will be whichever edition you installed. I had the following folders on my computer as I upgraded to the ultimate edition after first trialling professional:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 2 - ENU
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 - ENU

To change the compatibility mode take the following steps:

1. Right click on setup.exe and click Properties
2. Switch to the Compatibility tab
3. Untick the "Run this program in compatibility mode for" checkbox
4. If you have a button at the bottom of the dialog entitled "Show settings for all users" click this and repeat step 3 in this window.
5. Click OK until you have dismissed all dialog windows
6. Go back to the uninstall entry and uninstall as normal.

Power User Bonus Tip

I love little tips like this but usually I forget them by the time I get around to being able to use them again. To get the uninstall window open you can enter the following command in Start | Run:

control appwiz.cpl