Datasheet

Chapter 1
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This page is self-explanatory: clicking on the first link will install the MSDE engine; clicking on the
second will cause the sample databases – including Northwind, which we'll be using throughout this
book – to be created.
This page will only appear once, so if you (or someone else) have been here before, you won't see it.
Don't worry: you'll find the instmsde.exe and configsamples.exe files that these links
invoke beneath the FrameworkSDK\Samples folder of your Visual Studio installation.
Ensure that you're logged on as a user with Administrator privileges on the current machine, and click
on the first link (or run the executable). The following dialog will appear:
When this has finished, there's no need to restart your machine. You can go straight on to the next step,
which will produce another dialog:
Once again, wait for this step to finish its work... and you're all done. But what exactly have you done? The
best way to understand that is to open up Visual Basic .NET, ready for the quick tour in the next section.
Using MSDE
Once it has been successfully installed on the local machine, you need to make sure that the MSDE
service has started. This procedure differs slightly from platform to platform, but the instruction here,
for Windows 2000, should tell you all you need to know. From the Start Menu, open the Control Panel,
and go to Administrative Tools | Services: