BUG: "Help Update In Progress" message appears when you start Visual Studio .NET (821632)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (2002), Professional Edition
  • Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (2002), Enterprise Architect Edition
  • Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (2002), Enterprise Developer Edition
  • Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (2002), Academic Edition

SYMPTOMS

When you start Visual Studio .NET, or when you start the Visual Studio .NET Documentation in Microsoft Document Explorer (Dexplore.exe), you receive the following messages:Help Update In Progress

Help is updating to reflect your recent changes. This may take several minutes.This behavior occurs in the following scenario:
  1. You install Visual Studio .NET on your computer.
  2. You run the Visual Studio .NET Setup program in Maintenance mode to change the Visual Studio .NET installation on your computer.
  3. In Maintenance mode, you update your Visual Studio .NET documentation by adding content or by removing content.
When the Visual Studio .NET Setup program has completed the documentation update, the updated documentation must be merged back into the Visual Studio .NET Documentation. This merge occurs the first time that you start Visual Studio .NET or the Visual Studio .NET Documentation.

However, the messages appear every time that you start Visual Studio .NET.

Note This behavior does not occur when you use Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003.

Note If you update the documentation, and then a user who does not have administrative credentials on your computer starts either Visual Studio .NET or the Visual Studio .NET Documentation before you perform the steps that are described in the Workaround section, unexpected behavior may occur.

WORKAROUND

Important To make sure that your documentation updates are completed correctly, do not perform any other actions on your computer until the Help Update In Progress message disappears.

To prevent the Help Update In Progress message from appearing every time that you start Visual Studio .NET, follow these steps:
  1. Verify that you have administrative credentials on your computer.
  2. Quit all instances of Visual Studio .NET and the Visual Studio .NET Documentation.
  3. Start the Visual Studio .NET Documentation.
  4. Wait for the Help Update In Progress message to disappear.
  5. Verify that you can gain access to the documentation contents.
  6. Quit the Visual Studio .NET Documentation.
  7. Start Visual Studio .NET.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This bug was corrected in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003.

MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce the Behavior

On a computer that has Visual Studio .NET and the Visual Studio .NET Documentation installed, follow these steps:
  1. Run the Visual Studio .NET Setup program.
  2. On the Visual Studio .NET Setup page, click Visual Studio .NET.
  3. On the Maintenance Page, click Add or Remove Features.
  4. On the Options Page, click to clear the Documentation check box. (If the Documentation check box is not already selected, click to select the Documentation check box.)

    Note The Documentation check box is already selected only if you have previously installed some of the documentation contents.
  5. Click Update Now!.

    Wait for the update to be completed.
  6. On the Update Page, click Done.
  7. On the Visual Studio .NET Setup page, click Exit.
  8. Start Visual Studio .NET or start the Visual Studio .NET Documentation.

REFERENCES

For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

318945 FIX: Visual Studio .NET and MSDN files corrupted during installation

For more information, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;vsnet

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:3/7/2006
Keywords:kbvs2005swept kbvs2005doesnotapply kbvs2002sp1sweep kbBug kbfix kbDlg kbhelp kbMaintMode kbSoftwareDist kbsetup kbDeployment kbDocs KB821632 kbAudDeveloper
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