Visual Studio setup problem - 'A problem has been encountered while loading the setup components. Canceling setup.'

I've had a serious issue with my Visual Studio 2008 setup. I receive the ever-so-useful error 'A problem has been encountered while loading the setup components. Canceling setup.' whenever I try to uninstall, reinstall or repair Visual Studio 2008 (team system version). If I can't resolve this issue I have no choice but to completely wipe my computer and start again which will take all day long! I've recently received very strange errors when trying to build projects regarding components running out of memory (despite having ~2gb physical memory free at the time) which has rendered my current VS install useless.

Note I installed VS2005 shell version using the vs_setup.msi file in the SQL Server folder after I had installed VS2008, in order to gain access to the SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services designer in Business Intelligence Development Studio (this is inexplicably unavailable in VS2008).

Does anyone have any solutions to this problem?

P.S.: I know this isn't directly related to programming, however I feel this is appropriate to SO as it is directly related to my ability to program at all!

Note: A colleague found a solution to this problem, hopefully this should help others with this problem.

Solution 1:

A colleague found this MS auto-uninstall tool which has successfully uninstalled VS2008 for me and saved me hours of work!!

Hopefully this might be useful to others. Doesn't speak highly of MS's faith in their usual VS maintenance tools that they have to provide this as well!

Solution 2:

I had the same error message. For me it was happening because I was trying to run the installer from the DVD rather than running the installer from Add/Remove programs.

Solution 3:

In my case, uninstalling from Add&Remove Programs didn't work. Instead, the problem was due to a recently hotfix installed through automatic updates. The hotfix to VS 2008 (in my case) has the number KB952241, so I uninstalled it using Add/Remove Programs checking on the show updates option. After it was unistalled the problem was gone.