Scyllinice:

Hello, When I try to install the starter kit, I get an error that states: String cannot be zero length. I have Visual Studio 2005 Professional. How can I fix this? Is it a bad download?

I have the same problem :(

When I open the .vsi file, the licence agreement appears normally. But then when I accept, an error message says:

A problem occurred while running the installer. Please contact the content author for problems with the content.
Error Message:
Strings cannot have zero length.

The installer then exits with no further error messages.

This sounds like a corrupt file to me, but I've downloaded and re-downloaded the file and still no luck. There has to be something wrong somewhere because many people have installed this content successfully.

I have Visual Studio 2005 Professional and am running Window Vista x64. I replaced the older XNA GSE 1.0 with the 2.0 Beta for VS 2005 Pro compatibility.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have seen this before, and one way from memory that I fixed it was to reset the settings or reinstall the VS environment :). What I did find was this post on asp.net.

 Maybe you had installed Visual Studio 2005 and VWD 2005 Express and then you uninstalled one of the two and a couple string values got deleted in the registry.  Try the following to see if it works for you:

1. Click START then RUN then type REGEDIT and Enter.
2. Go to this location on the registry: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSEnvCommunityContent\ContentTypes\VSTemplate]
3. On the right side of the screen right click --> New --> String Value and add the following two string values

 Value Name = "ClassName"    Value Data = "VSContentInstaller.VSTemplateInstallerPage"
 Value Name=  "DisplayName"  Value Data = "#VSTemplateContentDisplayName"

Close the registry and try again!... hope it helps.

Here is the link to the post (http://forums.asp.net/p/1014984/1362545.aspx)

Thanks very much for the help. That’s solved my problem!

However, I did have to search for the registry location, as it was not in the same place you mentioned. I found the location at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\MSEnvCommunityContent\ContentTypes\VSTemplate

I guess this is because I have a 64-bit machine (Wow6432Node).

Before I installed Visual Studio 2005 Professional I had 3 Express Editions (C#, C++, VWD) which I uninstalled after Professional was installed. This must have caused the problem.

Thanks again for the help.

Sorry for hijacking the thread, but it's pointless to open a new one with the same title.

I experienced a different problem when installing this starer kit: it didn't show up in the IDE.

Fortunately, I've found the solution (at least, for my case).

If someone else happened to get this issue, hope the workaround helps.

WorldWind360:

I too was missing an "XNA Game Studio 2.0" folder as well. Both for Net Rumble and Ship Game. Adding the folder made it work.

Everyone is missing that folder, but the starter kits work without it. :-)

The starter kits get installed into the Visual C# folder, but that doesn't prevent you from using them. You just have to click on the "Visual C#" folder under "Project types" on the left-hand side of the New Project dialog. If you have the "XNA Game Studio 2.0" folder selected, then you will only see templates that are installed in that subfolder.

Admittedly, they'd be easier to find if we put them in the XGS 2.0 subfolder, but the content installer is somewhat limited and won't let us do that. :-(