In January I attempted installing Visual Studion 2008 and always got an install failure when the Microsoft Visual Studio Web Authoring Component was being installed.  I found several postings on the Microsoft Support Site (http://support.microsoft.com).  After reading thoses posts here is what I have found:

  1. Uninstall ALL Beta everything
  2. SDKs
  3. VS Add-Ons
  4. Development…whatever
  5. Uninstall Microsoft Windows SDK 6
  6. Reboot and attempt VS2008 installation again

I also uninstalled Sharepoint Designer, as I have seen issues with this before, but it does not appear that this is not an issue/problem source.  Several of my coworkers who had similar experiences were able to install VS2008 without removing Sharepoint Designer so there is not need to worry about that.