Woo hoo! Dialog and error are gone!

This was a crazy one to fix. For years, sometimes when building a "setup" project in my VisualStudio 2005 solutions, I would get a bizarre SQL Tools error via a Dr. Watson dialog. Somehow on my old machine I made the dialog disappear, but the building always reported "1 failed" even though it actually built the project. This month I got a new laptop, and the dialog is back. So I tracked down a fix. There were 2 suggestions regarding a user group SQLServer2005NotificationServicesUser$COMPUTERNAME, and either giving it extra permissions or adding the logged in user to the group. Neither of those worked. But here is what worked (and saved here for future reference):

The installer runs for SQL Server 2005 Tools (64-bit) and comes up with0:Watson 1:1304 2:StreamSupportFiles 3:streamBinaryToDisk 4:55:e:\sql9_sp2_t\sql\setup\darwin\sqlcastub\streamca.cpp 6:238 7:sqlcastub.dll 8:sqlrun.msiWhen clicking ok, I get 'Error writing to file: . Verify that you have access to that directory. [ http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/327997 ]

The recommendation is to:

Please refer to workarounds mentioned in this thread - http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=113155

Which details the issue again with a recommendation from Microsoft to:

This appears to be an issue with the SQL install. Specifically, there seems to be a problem with the install mergemod.dll. Installing a later version of mergemod.dll seems to fix the issue. You can install a later mergemod.dll by installing Orca: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/msi/setup/orca_exe.asp

So it's off to install Orca, however the page to install Orca points out it is only available via  Windows SDK Components for Windows Installer Developers, so let's go install that, except of course the link doesn't go to the download page, it's over at Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit (SDK). Excellent, easy enough, however first, apparently, I need to upgrade to Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.

Now if you are anything at all like me (which apparently is not likely) then you're likely thinking, this is crazy, how on earth could this cookie crumb trail of suggestions lead to anything that would solve my problem, but lo and behold! Problem fixed. No dialog. No error.

And now saved here, so next time I can just look at my blog for the fix.