70-504: Windows Workflow Foundation 3.5

Part of working in the Solutions Team for Quick Solutions, Inc., is that we get special offers for all kind of Microsoft stuff. The latest one was an invitation to participate in the Beta Test for the exam 70-504- MS .Net Framework 3.5 Windows Workflow Foundation.

In order to study for this beta test I have to install vs2008.

Since I am not doing any C++ programming, I decided not to install any of the C++ components. By unselecting it, I saved almost 2GB in space...!! However, when I open Studio 2008 for the first time, I've got this error:

Package Load Failure

Package 'Visual C++ Resource Editor Package' has failed to load properly ( GUID = {74AAD8B2-3294-49CB-BB5D-E9BAB132BFD5} ). Please contact package vendor for assistance. Application restart is recommended, due to possible environment corruption. Would you like to disable loading this package in the future? You may use 'devenv /resetskippkgs' to re-enable package loading.

Selecting Yes, got rid of this dialog box. Now I went and try to create a sequential workflow application, and this is what I got:

An error occurred while loading the workflow. Please correct the following error and try reloading the document to view the workflow.

The designer could not be shown for this file because none of the the classes within it can be designed.

Using my 2nd brain, aka Google, I came across a lot of other post relating to this error, but none of them applied to my configuration. My configuration is Vista x64, with BizTalk 2006 R2, and Visual Studio 2005 Team System installed. I have installed the SDK for .NET 3.0 some time ago.

I can create workflow projects in 2005. However, using the .NET 3.5 does not seems to work.

When I compare both projects VS2005 and VS2008, the only differences I've found is that the 2008 reference these assemblies: System.WorkflowServices .Net 3.5, and the System.ServiceModel. The new assembly points to this location:

c:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.5\System.WorkflowServices.dll

Then I started to dig out more information on the Event Logs. Then I found the culprit:

The Windows update "Update for Windows (KB929300)" was successfully installed. (Command line: ""C:\Windows\system32\WUSA.exe" "e:\setup\..\wcu\dotnetframework\dotnetmsp\x64\NetFX3.0-KB929300-v6000-x64.msu" /quiet /norestart")

It seems that after the setup has finished installing, it needed to reboot my machine. However, the /quiet and the /norestart flags did not report anything back to me. So I did not know I had to reboot for the workflow application 3.5 to work.

Now I can get back to reading Pro WF Windows Workflow in .NET 3.0, and try to run some samples out of the SDK before my test.