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I've installed Visual Studio 2010 (fresh install), then applied the SP1. Now I've tried to install the silverlight 4 tools, but i'm getting a strange error message :

"Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Web Developer Express 2010 or Visual Phone Developer Express 2010 that matches the language version of Silverlight Tools 4 must be installed before installation of Silverlight Tools can continue. Silverlight Tools is available in other languages at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=177432.

The Visual Web Developer feature for Visual Studio 2010 must be installed before installation can continue."

I've triple checked and there's no language conflict. Browsing the web, some guys have the same error, but there are some MSDN posts that say that with SP1 you don't need to install silverlight tools because they're already bundled with SP1, but that's not the case here, I don't have any project templates in VS for silverlight, and the tools aren't installed. Any ideas??

Ciro Santilli新疆棉花TRUMP BAN BAD
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Daniel Perez
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11 Answers11

60

Found out what happened

I installed first Visual Studio, and removed some components that I thought wouldn’t be necessary (c++, f#, etc). I also removed visual web developer tools (shouldn’t have done that… you’ll see why in a minute).
After that, I installed Service Pack 1. Then, when trying to install the Silverlight 4 tools, I got an strange error message and I couldn’t continue. After searching the web, I found out that the SP1 for VS2010 comes with the Silverlight 4 tools bundled, and it should be installed by it.
The problem comes here : since I didn’t have my VS installation with the web developer tools installed, the SP1 installer just disregarded the Silverlight tools installation. And since Microsoft’s Silverlight 4 toolkit installer is buggy (if you have SP1 for VS2010 you just get this weird error and can’t continue), I was stuck.
How did I solve it? Add web developer tools to VS2010, and reapply SP1. It’s a much faster solution than uninstalling SP1, installing Silverlight 4 tools and reinstalling SP1. Let’s hope that Microsoft grows aware of this situation, and upgrades their Silverlight tools installer to be a little more clever in the future so we don’t have to be doing these workarounds

Daniel Perez
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    Can you elaborate on what " Add web developer tools to VS2010" means? I am not familiar with exactly what this is. Do you have a link to a download? – Brent Lamborn Dec 15 '11 at 17:04
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    It's not only a much faster solution, but uninstalling SP1 and installing Silverlight 4 could often fail in the last phase, giving you strange errors while trying to reinstalling SP1, as I just experimented now (ignoring the messagebox on SP1 uninstallation which was warning me like "Uninstalling SP1 can prevent the system from reinstalling it", I thought "WHAT?! Yes yes, nice try" while clicking "OK", and now I'm finishing a total reinstallation of VS2010 from scratch...) – Dippi Jan 25 '12 at 16:56
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    Just think, the app probably could have been written in HTML5 by now. – Jason Rowe May 23 '12 at 05:34
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    @JasonRowe In my case I had to debug and support for legacy Silverlight application. – sabertooth1990 May 26 '17 at 12:39
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According to Microsoft you shouldn't need to install it but unfortunately it does contain some components that are not included in Visual Studio 2010 SP1. In order to work around this you can extract the Silverlight 4 tools installer with 7zip and then install the missing components (notably FSharpRuntimeSL4.msi) manually.

Oenotria
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  • Thanks, you saved my day. I got the same problem, so I downloaded the Silverlight 4 tools for VS 2010, extracted silverlight4_tools.exe with winrar and installed FSharpRuntimeSL4.msi. – Francesco De Vittori Aug 24 '11 at 20:40
  • It is not necessary to use 7zip, when you get error just click browse button, you will see FSharpRuntimeSL4.msi. Select it and click OK. – Dan Doyon Feb 24 '12 at 17:26
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    this one did it for me with one difference... I was able to run FSharpRuntimeSL4 but then I had to remove the silverlight 5 runtime before I could install the silverlight_developer for 4. – hal9000 Apr 18 '12 at 17:22
  • This worked for me: Open silverlight4_tools.exe in WinRar (as an archive): run silverlightTools_Package.msi, then silverlight_sdk.msi, then RiaServices.msi - I can now create Silverlight apps in Visual Studio. Note I didn't run the FSharp or VS10-KB components. – Tom Brown May 18 '12 at 09:14
  • For those who need to fix a bug in a legacy system and messed up dev environment, this is a correct way to get rid of LS5 components (that can be accidentally installed as being latest) and reinstall SL4 missing parts. Should be marked as correct answer. – incognito Jan 31 '17 at 15:11
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The VS 2010 Service Pack 1 has SilverLight Toolkit install as default. You don't need to install the SilverLight tool anymore.

Steve
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    Yes, I was getting this error with VS2010 SP1 installed. However, I did still need to install [Silverlight_Developer.exe](http://go2.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=188039) to get things working – Mark Heath Jun 05 '11 at 21:32
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    "Silverlight Toolkit" is different that "Silverlight Tools". – MattSlay Jul 05 '11 at 04:02
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    I had to install the Silverlight_Developer as well (even after SP1). – MJ Hufford Jul 26 '11 at 21:16
  • I have been through the same mission and I thought I had the latest of everything. However, I started noticing XAML properties missing. As an example, can anyone tell me if they have the TargetNullValue available on a textblock in XAML. Thanks – Greg Jul 27 '11 at 12:48
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I got tired of many threads discussing that and no real solution, at least o pass through the error complaining the VS2010 version/language.

I downloaded the Silverlight4_tools.exe, and started from command line passing the option /X

SilverLight4_Tools.EXE /X

It will ask me a place to extract the files. I set a dir, and from there I run:

silverlight_sdk.msi
RiaServices.msi

After that I could able to remove the old

using System.Web.Ria;
using System.Web.Ria.ApplicationServices;

and replace them with

using System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Hosting;
using System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Server.ApplicationServices;
Aliaksei Kliuchnikau
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Mauricio M Costa
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    I ended up using the /X trick to Silverlight_Developer.exe so that I could install silverlightdev.msp.. AWFUL that I could get VS2010 into a state like this. – itchi Feb 08 '12 at 21:54
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    This helped me diagnose a different but related problem where I unwittingly had the Silverlight 4 runtime, rather than the Silverlight 4 Developer runtime. Helpfully they both appear identical in the "Features and Programs" window - apart from the disk space they use! – Richard Williams Mar 08 '13 at 09:38
  • It worked like a charm! For my big ria-services business project without changing a line. – Davut Gürbüz Jan 10 '15 at 23:31
  • I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to add my thanks to Richard Williams for the comment. I had been banging my head against the screen over this. I uninstalled the Silverlight item, then installed the developer runtime, and it now works! Thanks. – Avrohom Yisroel Apr 29 '15 at 16:02
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Thought I propose a bit more detail about installing FSharpRuntimeSL4.msi manually... for myself this alone did not fix the issue. I needed the Silverlight 4 Toolkit 9April 2010)

First if you had the SilverLight 5 runtime at some point you will have to remove it.

Then extract the Silverlight4_Tools 4 files as proposed above. I had to run everything to finally get an old solution to compile properly:

  1. FSharpRuntimeSL4.msi
  2. SilverlightTools_Package.msi
  3. silverlight_developer.exe
  4. RiaServices.msi
  5. VS10-KB982218-v4.exe

After that I was able to install the April update.

hal9000
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2

Maybe a tip for some of us. Install or repair MSXML6. We were struggling getting the SL4 projects loaded in VS2010 SP1. Uninstalled all SL4 components... reinstalled SP1... recovered VS2010... and all other combinations, nothing worked. Installing the MSXML6 solved our issue.

Nick V
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  • Thank you, this solved my problem that I spent hours on to solve. Installed all Silverlight runtimes, sdk's, tools, toolkits you name it, it all didn't work. Installing MSXML6 solved my problem. – Guido Neele Jan 23 '14 at 11:40
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Install SP1 and then try to create a silverlight project. It displays an error. There is a link on the dialogue box. When you click it, it installs a something other than Silverlight4_Tools.exe. It actually says something about silverlight 5 ... but silverlight 5 is not added. If you install silverlight 5 ... you can still choose silverlight 4.

ferrellcarr
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**Maybe a tip for some of us. Install or repair MSXML6. We were struggling getting the SL4 projects loaded in VS2010 SP1. Uninstalled all SL4 components... reinstalled SP1... recovered VS2010... and all other combinations, nothing worked. Installing the MSXML6 solved our issue.**

Along these lines, I found that the combination of Visual Studio 2010 with SP1, and Silverlight 4 in either Vista or Windows 7 does not coexist well with the latest (December 2012) Silverlight 5 browser plug ins. The "solution"--at least for me it works--is to remove Silverlight 5 from your system as a browser client plug in, then install the SL Developer package that comes up when you try and create a new SL project and things are missing. This will work to allow you to develop in SL 3/4 and .NET 4.0, but now you're missing the SL browser plug in so you cannot surf the net and visit SL sites [UPDATE: it's mysteriously back, so indeed I can surf the net]. A minor setback since I develop in a virtual OS and go back and forth to the real OS, where I have SL in the browser but don't develop there. A bug perhaps, though I also don't have all the Microsoft Updates either... This is what happens when a framework stops getting supported?

PaulDecember
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Further to https://stackoverflow.com/a/9146742/427684 I think this is what he was referring to

Silverligh error

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=168436

Which currently takes you here;

Microsoft® Silverlight® 5 Tools for Visual Studio® 2010 SP1

Community
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Coops
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I had the same problem. Installer of silverlight4 tools has file ParameterInfo.xml (if you have only .exe file then unzip it). It describes system requirements.

In my situation installer requires version of VS2010 "10.0.30319", but in register was other version (10.0.40219). I edited version in register, installed tools and wrote first version in register.

May be your problems are not the same (not version of VS). Check other requirements of this file.

Miheretab Alemu
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Konstantin Moseychuk
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If you are trying to install the Lync SDK it will not recognise SP1 as a valid alternative for the Silverlight 4 tools. In this instance you will need to uninstall SP1, install the Silverlight 4 Tools and the Lync SDK before installing SP1 again.

Scott
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