"Information Not Found" page in Visual Studio 2008, VB.NET Express Edition

Question

I'm experimenting with VS 2008 Express edition and when I hit f1 on a keyword or class name I seem to get the Information Not Found page more than 90% of the time.

Is this a configuration problem? Is it because this is the "free-as-in-beer" Express edition? Did Microsoft move their online documentation since the version I downloaded?

I'm kind of amazed that here's a demo of their flagship development product which seems to be missing almost any kind of integrated reference documentation. How is the integrated help in Visual Studio meant to work?

Answer 1

Did you install the MSDN Libary with the express edition? You need to :)

And you can also download the full version of the MSDN Documentation if you just want EVERYTHING.

The documentation is absolutely free.

What version do you have of express, then I can redirect you to a link to the full documentation, but for the express one (smaller, but proberbly have what you need), you need to run the installer again, and add the MSDN Libary on.

Answer 2

Keep in mind that the full MSDN Library for Visual Studio is massive - at the current time it is 2GB - so for this reason it's offered as a separate download.

There appears to be an abriged version which is 300MB, although I would suggest that you'd see the "Information Not Available" message every now and then with that version installed.

You can get them both for free from MSDN.

Personally, I have the full version installed, but if you don't want to download MSDN you can turn online help on by doing the following:

In your Visual Studio product, select Tools -> Options from the application menu. Then select Environment -> Help -> Online in the Options dialog. Under "When loading Help content" select "Try online first, then local" and click OK

Answer 3

In your Visual Studio product, select Tools -> Options from the application menu. Then select Environment -> Help -> Online in the Options dialog. Under "When loading Help content" select "Try online first, then local" and click OK

Problem is this does NOT work for me, it does NOT stick, it always comes back to "Try local only, not online"!

My environment is clean version of Windows XP SP2 installed on VMWare. Then VS 2008 Express SP1 DVD which i burned from the all in one download. I did not bother downloading the MSDN so there is NO local, i should be able to always use online only. Why is it not sticking ? Ridiculous, should work straight out of the box.

Answer 4

Agreed. I have a fresh install of VS 2008 Pro on XP SP3 (fresh install). Installed all updates, chose to use the online help, worked the first time, but after reboot no longer works.

Answer 5

hi, run microsoft visual studio 2008 documentation with 'run as administrator' option. visual studio should be closed, then check all the settings. close and then try within visual studio, it should work now