On a system with the .NET Framework v1.1 (w/o the patches) already installed
and working well, I attempted to install the 2.0 .NET Framework after
downloading the 24Mb package.

I have full administrator permissions on the machine. There aren't any other
versions of Visual Srtudio installed (.NET or otherwise).

The failure is always at the point of installation of
Microsoft.VisualBasic.vsa.dll (size 16K). It appears that the file is in use
(there's a file of that name in the folder used by v1.1 of the .NET
Framework - an older version).

After this occurred twice, I chkdsk'd the HDD on startup (this is Windows
2000 Profewssional SP4, all patches). There's 10Gb free space, plenty of
RAM. And i removed all traces of the unsuccessful install, after the
Microsoft Error Reporting app had done its stuff (there are many log files
etc left on disk).

So I attempted to see whether the file was in place, and what was happening
at this failure point - before dismissing the error messagebox and allowing
the install to roll back..

Browsing to the 2.0 install folder, I see that this DLL is present. I can
rename it (eg, with a leading underscore) which changes the error message
slightly. I can't delete or move that file, or copy it with Windows Explorer
(but I can at the command prompt).

I haven't seen other .NET v2.0 Beta1 install problems reported here.

Any clues, folks?

Ian Thomas