ERROR 25015 When Installing .NET Framework

DO NOT USE SUBINACL UTILITY

While attempting to install the .NET framework 2.0, I received the following error message:

“Error 25015. Failed to install assembly ‘C:WINDOWSMicrosoft.NETFramework v2.0.50727Microsoft.VisualBasic Vsa.dll’ because of system error: Access is denied.”

dotnet
Having administrator privileges, I found this odd, and there were not any other running applications. I searched for help on the web and in usenet, and dozens of others were having the same problem. I suspected a registry permissions problem, but the idiotic Microsoft error message gave no indication whether the problem was with a file or registry key.

Then a black cloud covered the sun and I stumbled upon Aaron Stebner’s blog.

If you are having this problem, DO NOT USE THE SUBINACL SCRIPT HE RECOMMENDS. It changes permissions on thousands of registry keys and is likely to destroy the usability of your computer.

What to do then? Search through the installation logs for .NET and find out which registry key is the problem, and fix the permissions on it, leaving the rest of the registry untouched.

General Considerations

Why would I say these things? First, all the software that comes out of Redmond is equally trashy. If Windows sucks, and their applications suck, what’s to prevent SUBINACL from sucking, too? Is it better because it’s not distributed? Are their best programmers the geeks in the back closet writing utilities to fix congenital Windows screw-ups? I doubt it.

Look, we have here a Microsoft “Program Manager” advocating a chainsaw massacre of the registry. God help us. That’s the non-mentality of those people: Throw knives until the problem goes away, then throw band-aids until the bleeding stops, generally when the patient dies. Then reload Windows.

How could it be, after running a PC for 5 years every day as the administrator, that there could be any file or directory or registry key that does not have administrator privileges? How could this possibly happen? Well, some idiot programmer who is not even good enough to work at Microsoft set those permissions in error. Shoot, it was probably something in the Microsoft Office installer.

You have heard that you should not believe everything you hear on the Internet. Microsoft is part of the Internet, so please, please don’t believe them, either.

Why are you using .NET anyway?

I have 20+ years of C and C++ code archives to draw from when I write a new program. We call that “code reuse.” With .NET, however, all of that code is considered renegade, “unmanaged” code, and is not to be trusted.

Isn’t it funny how the very people at Microsoft who were pushing code reuse under C++ (to sell compilers) are now no longer concerned about reusing all that C++ and MFC code?

Resist the wave of stupidity washing you up on the .NET beach. This is no Pacific island. Picture medical waste resting peacefully on the New Jersey shore. This .NET garbage has been written by the same idiots who wrote the OS and the other Microsoft languages and IDEs.

It’s all going to be obsolete in 2012 anyway, when they poo-poo .NET in favor of .UNIVERSE or .GOD or other such crap.

PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT ME REGARDING THIS WEB PAGE. I’VE WASTED ENOUGH TIME ON .NET.

As another data point, take a look a the picture below, from USA Today, July 11, 2007. It pictures an “ethnographer,” whatever that is, and a “user experience manager,” whatever that is, “discuss[ing] some of the concepts they use when beginning to access what the phone means to each individual user.” This is, of course, happening at Microsoft.

  ethnographer
Click (if you dare) for a larger image and readable caption
Please resist the urge to play caption-that-picture. Fishermen will have the most difficulty here. Just take it for face value. The woman in the middle is staring off into space, ethnographic space, reaching out to her ethnographic customers, touching their ethnographic minds, empathizing with them (ethnographically) while they use their teeny-tiny plastic cell phones to call home and say, “you want pizza tonight?” Oooohhh, can’t you just feel the clairvoyant energy?

All the while, the “user experience manager” (whatever that is) looks on, thinking “I can’t believe she’s getting paid for this B.S.” There are probably four other idiots with impressive titles sitting beside the photographer thinking, “I can’t believe we are all getting paid for this B.S.”

Take a look at the whiteboard. On the right is a list of phone features. This must pertain to the forthcoming Microsoft mPhone, or whatever. Nowhere on the board do we see “ease of use,” or “audio quality.” IT’S A PHONE, NOT A PC. IF I CANNOT HEAR MY WIFE WHEN I CALL HOME TO ASK IF SHE WANTS PIZZA TONIGHT, IT’S JUNK. IF WE’RE STUMBLING OVER THE 100 MILLISECOND DIGITAL CELLULAR CODING DELAY, IT’S JUNK.

No wonder Microsoft products are such garbage. They are designed not by shrewd engineers with input from shrewd users, but they are designed by “ethnographers” and “user experience managers.”

I read another article recently about all the electronic waste being dumped into landfills. How could this be happening when all our products are being designed by such competent “ethnographers” and “user experience managers?” It’s happening because these products are junk! Marginally useful, plastic junk.

I still own an electric drill my father bought in the 1960’s, and it still works, though he has passed away. It’s made out of metal. I have bought and discarded several other modern drills in the interim, likely designed by “ethnographers” and “user experience managers.”

Next time you are walking around Best Buy drooling over tech products, picture the ethnographer, interpreting your use of their product through your ethnic background, and picture the user experience manager, seeking to manage your user experience to fatten up her 401k, and all the while you just want to make a simple phone call to your spouse to find out what to put on the pizza.