I've been installing Visual Web Developer Express on several machines of late. (I've convinced several new to .NET to download and install this product and start learning before the free offer expires). Everything is going along fine and I receive the following error on one machine:
"BITS Service must be enabled before you start the installation process. Enable the BITS service and run setup again"
Deciding I should become more confident in troubleshooting strange messages I begin to think of what I know. “8 bits make one byte“. That hardly seems relevant. Venturing on, I click on the link in the error dialog window and learn that BITS stands for “Background Intelligent Transfer Service“. Feeling much smarter, I “google“ for answers. I've found several others have received this error also. Great, this should be easy. Not so fast.
Web developer groups provide no answers and the experts answering there keep sending folks to the asp.net groups.
ASP.NET groups at least provide clues - but alas, “no answer for you“.
Try asp.net forums. Here's a sampling of the “help“ I received. Help1 Help2
Here are the little BITS<groan> I learned.
1. BITS settings can prevent transfers (downloads) from occurring if BITS settings are not correct
2. BITS is also required for Windows Update Service and therefore cannot be disabled or started manually (as the help suggested)..
3. Downloading “manual“ gave me the link to download an image or an iso and burn my own CD. I found I didn't need to use the very long set of instructions provided by MS under the “manual“ install. Just download the .iso and extract to a CD. Installing from the CD works fine.
Hope your installation is more express than mine!