Visual Studio .NET 2003 is not compatible with Windows 7

Question

Hi all, I have my Windows 7 Enterprise installed and I need to install Visual Studio .NET 2003 in my machine as well as I need to maintain and support customers' projects which were mainly developed by using .NET 2003, 1.1 framework.

I am now facing error during the installation saying that it is not compatible with my system! I have tried a solution recommended in forum, which is to install Visual Studio .NET 2003 in Windows Virtual PC 2007 + XP Mode. It was my nightware when I found out that the Virtualization is not supported in my hardware and therefore I cant make use of XPM!

Please help before I made the last approach, which is to downgrade and have my Vista Business back!

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Hi DT_LSB,

Thank you for your post.

As far as I know, for the earlier versions before Visual Studio 2005 - Visual Studio .NET 2002/2003, they are not supported as development environments on Windows Vista. This also applied for Windows 7.
Please check: http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2006/09/26/772250.aspx
That's why we can receive this error message when we install the early versions on Windows 7.

To maintain your application via Visual Studio 2003, you had better to try Windows XP. Sorry for inconvenience.

Hope this helps. If you have any concern, please feel free to let me know.

Best regards,
Yichun Chen

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Answer 2

There are two meanings of "unsupported."

1. Software will not install or will install but won't run acceptably.
2. Software will install and will run acceptably but if you encounter any problems they will not be patched by the software vendor (e.g.,similar to Silverlight's working in Google Chrome but not being officially supported).

Re: Vista I thought the situation with VS 2003 was 2? The OP writes as though he's had it working with Vista but not with Win 7?

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Kevin

Answer 3

Hi NewWorldMan,

Thank you for your reply.

I did some research further on this issue. It seems that Visual Studio 2003 can be installed on Vista.
Please check: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/bb188244.aspx
However, we can find the following note from this document:

"While Visual Studio 2003 is not supported on Windows Vista if you choose to run it then we advise you to do the following:"

Thus, based on my understanding, as stable development environments, it would be better to apply Visual Studio 2003 on XP instead of Vista or Windows 7. The situation is similar with the scenario 2 that you mentioned. :)
If OP wants to install it on Vista, it can be installed.

Best regards,
Yichun Chen

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Answer 4

Hi DT_LSB,

This is the steps I take to successfully install Visual Studio .Net 2003 on my Windows 7 Enterprise machine :

1) Install FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions for IIS 7.0 (download here).
2) Install Visual Studio .Net 2003. Just skip when the installer command you to configure Frontpage 2002 Server Extension.
3) Install .Net Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 (download here).
4) Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Highlight your machine, then double-click on ISAPI and CGI Restrictions. Change setting for ASP .NET v1.1.4322 to Allowed.

Maybe there are some unnecessary steps, but it works for me. I hope this it works for you too.

Answer 5

I went ahead and installed Windows Virtual PC and XP Mode on my Windows 7 machine.  I then proceeded to install .net 2003 within the virtual XP environment.  I found it seems to start ok, but I also see there is no inetpub folder, etc created.  I probably have to install and configure IIS in this environment to solve this I gather? 

But my question is in reference to your response.  Did you install .Net 2003 and make these changes directly in Windows 7 or within the virtual XP environment?  I rather be able to install and run .Net 2003 directly in Win 7 vs. the virtual pc, as this would save me from having to install my other supporting apps in the virtual XP environment as well.

Thanks

Answer 6

Hi,

How do you install the frontpage 2002 server extensions for IIS7 in windows 7?

Thought windows 7 is IIS7.5 which cannot install frontpage?

I would like to know how you install it as i facing my web project cannot open in vs2003 in windows7.

thanks.

 

Answer 7

Hi DT_LSB,

This is the steps I take to successfully install Visual Studio .Net 2003 on my Windows 7 Enterprise machine :

1) Install FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions for IIS 7.0 (download here).
2) Install Visual Studio .Net 2003. Just skip when the installer command you to configure Frontpage 2002 Server Extension.
3) Install .Net Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 (download here).
4) Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Highlight your machine, then double-click on ISAPI and CGI Restrictions. Change setting for ASP .NET v1.1.4322 to Allowed.

Maybe there are some unnecessary steps, but it works for me. I hope this it works for you too.

I downloaded that FPS for IIS7, and when I installed it it popped up an error message "An internal error has occurred. (         )".

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Welcome to help me with my open source project at http://code.google.com/p/batch-image-watermark-processor/

Answer 8

Yes.. This really works on my Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit machine.. Thanks a lot....

Answer 9

This works on my Windows 7 Home Edition 64, I have installed the VS .NET 1.1 before, I couldn't open 1.1 projects, follow up the above step 3, 4, then works.

Thank you very much

Answer 10

This works on my Windows 7 Home Edition 64, I have installed the VS .NET 1.1 before, I couldn't open 1.1 projects, follow up the above step 3, 4, then works.

Thank you very much

Hey Supergiger,

I'm building a new home workstation using Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, and I will need to install my Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 for my Autodesk 3ds Max 8 projects.  From your success and others in this link it looks like the instructions punk5sagoe gave work... Yay!!!

I just have one question:

Do I install VS .NET 2003 using the 32-bit compatability feature in Win7 under "Program Files (X86)" or what???  Please reply.

Answer 11

I have a similar concern.  My XP desktop is nearly ten years old and it's time to retire it.  So, I need to migrate what I can to a new Windows 7 machine, and somehow accommodate the rest, such as VS 2003.

I'm trying Oracle's VirtualBox on my Windows 7 Home computer.  I've installed a spare licensed copy of Windows XP Professional and updated it, and installed a lot of software I use as part of my development environment, such as GhostScript, Paint Shop Pro, etc.  Notably, I installed my copy of VS 2003 on the virtual machine and there was no problems doing so.

I haven't tried to build anything yet, but I have a fairly large C/C++ project that I plan to move over to the virtual machine in a few days.  If the virtual VS 2003 builds the same files as my desktop VS 2003, byte for byte, I'll call it a success.

The neat part about this is that when I finally finish all this, all I have to do is install VirtualBox on my new Windows 7 machine, and move the files containing my virtual machine's hard drives over to the new machine.  I'll have a pre-set environment!

Be sure to read the VirtualBox manual carefully before you install and use it.

Answer 12

We are just compiling straight C++ / MFC and newer C# code.   I followed a modified version of the above steps incorporating other stuff I'd read at StackOverflow.   Our target development machine is Win7-64 Professional.

1) Install FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions for IIS 7.0 (http://www.iis.net/community/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1630). Installer typically requires a version for "Prerequisites". But I'm not sure if this is required if using /NO_BSLN_CHECK in Step 2.

2) Install Visual Studio .Net 2003. You need to run it from the Setup directory, the setup.exe on the root of the CD will not work: D:\setup\SetUp.exe /NO_BSLN_CHECK. Run in compatibility mode for Vista Sp2 and require Admin privileges. I only installed C++ and C#. I unchecked everything else.

3) Install VS 2003 SP1. Run in compatibility mode for Vista Sp2 and require Admin privileges.

If you want to search across a project or a solution to work then you need to tweak the compatibility settings for DevEnv.exe. You can do this by right clicking the shortcut to launch VS.NET 2003 and selecting properties, choosing the "Compatibility" sub-tab and then checking "Disable Desktop Composition" as well as "Disable Visual Themes" .

I  have run into an issue,  however, that the IDE's project property page comes up blank.  I've verified it does this with a blank solution as well.

Any guidance appreciated as I'd obviously like to be able to modify these settings.

Thanks.

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rhfritz

Answer 13

I need to run VS2003 as adminstrator under Win7 64-bit, to support legacy projects (e.g. those that run on the original Xbox).  The old XDK requires VS2003, so upgrading is not an option.  I could run WinXP but I prefer Win7.

VS2003 is not officially supported under Win7 and trying to do so creates a couple of fairly annoying problems:

• Find-in-files causes VS2003 to hang.
• Linking fails due to a PDB file handle leak.

The Find-in-files hang is solved by using "Disable visual themes".  Navigate to the VS2003 shortcut (Start-->Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003), right-click to get context menu, select Compatibility tab, Settings pane, and check "Disable visual themes".

The linker failure (LNK1201) happens when you run the program through the debugger, stop it, modify a file and build.  The error is that a Visual Studio hold a handle to the PDB file, while the linker tries to write to that file.  You can stop and restart VS2003 to bypass the issue.  Works but is annoying.

You can also use the Microsoft SysInternals "handle.exe" utility to find, then close handles held by a process on a particular file.  Write a script to call handle.exe and set up the VS2003 project to run that script as a Pre-Build Event.  (See this thread.) But handle.exe requires running as admin.

You could hypothetically change handle.exe to run as admin using the usual steps (e.g. as a compatibility setting) but then handle.exe (apparently) runs in a nested shell, and then the stdout text does not get to the calling script.

You can make VS2003 run as admin, in which case the Pre-Build script also runs as admin, hence does handle.exe, and that works.

The remaining trick is to get VS2003 SLN files to open properly.  If you simply make VS2003 run as admin automatically then the VS version selector fails to run VS2003.  I don't know why, but it is the case.

You could associate SLN files to open using VS2003 devenv.exe instead of VSLauncher.exe.  That works but then all new SLN files (2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, ...) fail to open.

So the final step then is to make VSLauncher.exe run as admin.  This fails as of KB2492386 as this thread indicates.  Uninstalling that update was the final step in this saga, to get everything to work.

UPDATE 2013 Feb 15: As of a recent Windows Update (2013 Feb 12) this problem returned.

The "Microsoft Windows" update KB2762895 caused the problem to return. That update (like KB2492386) is described as resolving compatibility issues.  Ironic that an update meant to resolve compatibility issues actually introduces them.

After uninstalling that, Visual Studio version selector once again can open solutions for version 7.1.

UPDATE 2013 March 27: Yet anoter Windows Update (2013 March 13) re-introduces this problem.

This time it's KB2791765, which is yet another "Compatibility update".  Likewise as with the others, after uninstalling that, Visual Studio version selector once again can open solutions for version 7.1.