22????

I decided to uninstall Visual Studio 2008 from my work computer today to try and fix a problem I was having.  Logically I went to the Add or Remove Programs control panel and selected Visual Studio 2008 and hit uninstall.  After about 15 minutes the uninstall completed and I noticed there were many other programs listed that were related to Visual Studio 2008 that hadn’t been removed.  I did a google search to figure out which to remove and found the official instructions on how to remove Visual Studio 2008.  From Microsoft’s website:

Manual uninstall instructions

1. Go to the Control Panel and launch Add/Remove Programs
2. Remove all instances of Visual Studio 2008/Codename Orcas products
3. Remove any remaining supporting products in the specified order.
   1. Remove “MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008”
   2. Remove “Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5”
   3. Remove “Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 Design Tools”
   4. Remove “Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 for Devices”
   5. Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio Performance Collection Tools”
   6. Remove “Windows Mobile 5.0 SDK R2 for Pocket PC”
   7. Remove “Windows Mobile 5.0 SDK R2 for Smartphone”
   8. Remove “Crystal Reports 2007”
   9. Remove “Visual Studio Asset System”
   10. Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio Web Authoring Component / Microsoft Web Designer Tools”
   11. Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System Runtime”
   12. Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System Runtime Language Pack” (non-English editions only)
   13. Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office Runtime 3.0”
   14. Remove “Microsoft Document Explorer”
   15. Remove “Microsoft Document Explorer 2005 Language Pack” (non-English editions only)
   16. Remove “Microsoft Device Emulator 3.0”
   17. Remove “Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 3.5”
   18. Remove “Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP1”
   19. Remove “.NET Framework 2.0 SDK”
   20. Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio Codename Orcas Remote Debugger”
   21. Remove “Microsoft Visual Studio 64bit Prerequisites Beta” (64-bit platforms only)
   22. Remove “Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5”

22!! I kid you not, 22 seperate “programs” to uninstall to get rid of this beast!  They also provide a handy .exe you can download that will do it all for you but you have to go to their website to get it.  WTF did the one that I ran do?  Conveniently removed 1/22 of the installed product.  Who designs this stuff?