Update: RPC/encoded still doesn't work with the October CTP bits.
I got brave/curious/stupid/desperate after getting BizTalk to call an RPC/encoded Web service again and installed the .NET runtime distributed with the October CTP to see if that would be an option to have VS 2005 and BizTalk 2004 on the same box.
The answer is:
NOPE!!!
NOPE!!!
Now BizTalk is hanging again when processing an RPC/encoded response from a web service. I surely hope that the .NET Runtime team and the BizTalk team get together before Visual Studio 2005 beta 2 and hash this one out.
The whole side-by-side concept would be really great if the entire world was running .NET. Since even Microsoft's own applications don't seem to be able to get it right, how should 3rd party developers be able to do that? The sad reality is: The world is full of legacy applications that are not ready for side-by-side installations of the framework. Quit pretending it is!