Visual Studio 2011 Beta for Windows XP?

Question

I noticed that, like the Visual Studio 2011 Developer Preview, the Visual Studio 2011 Beta released on February 29, 2012 on MSDN, also does not support Windows XP.

There are many large corporations (including the one I work for) that still use Windows XP as the corporate OS and have no plans to upgrade any time soon to Windows 7.

Are we as developers locked out of Visual Studio development tools going forward?

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Master VB Guru

Answer 1

XP will not be supported:

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems

• Windows 7 (x86 and x64)
• Windows 8 Consumer Preview (x86 and x64)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64)
• Windows Server 8 Beta (x64)

Supported Architectures

• 32-bit (x86)
• 64-bit (x64)

Answer 2

What about final version?

Answer 3

I am sure there are a lot of large corporations (including the one I work for) who use Windows XP as the OS for the users' desktops and have no plans to upgrade them to Windows 7 in the near future.

Going forward, then, are we out of luck using Visual Studio, since it will no longer be supported under Windows XP, etc.?

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Master VB Guru

Answer 4

Hi,

Thank you sending us the feedback. As you have noticed, Visual Studio 11 Beta doesn't support Windows XP. As to Visual Studio 11 final release, there's no such information published yet. We will refer to the official website for supported OS. 

Thanks & Regards,

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Forrest Guo | MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 5

If Visual Studio 2011 could not support Windows XP, we will not use it. Since most of our clients still use Windows XP, we have to work on it.

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Lei Jiang

Answer 6

I am in the same boat as you Lei. But it is not in M$ interest to continue to support XP when they are pushing everyone (willing or not) to Win 7. Since the response from M$ is the same message over and over you are arguing with a robot. Bottom line: You and I are out of luck.

Answer 7

According to this page;

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/downloads/go-live

Visual Studio 11 Beta is not supported on the Windows 8 beta. Are you saying that it is supported now?

Answer 8

Hi,

Go live is a higher level support of the new VS 11 beta products. Peole can apply VS11 in production use, and get support through Microsoft connect website: Get Go Live support on Microsoft Connect

So, VS11 beta runs Windows 8 Consumer preview.  But go-live support only applies to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2k8 R2 right now. As These two OS are released it will be easier to annouce the higher levle of support for them.

Best Regards,

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Forrest Guo | MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 9

Hi,

Thank you for the feedback, but a number of developers like myself are also no willing to use .NET 4.5 unless its supported in at LEAST VISTA and above.

The link shows only Windows 7 and above (for desktop), no mention of VISTA (or XP).

For servers, its not an issue.. We can recommend upgrades, but some clients run Vista and even XP Sp3 and upgrading 100+ machines is not an option.

When will we know what OS's are supported in .NET 4.5 FINAL ???   I don't really care if the Visual Studio IDE only works on Windows 7 and above.

But surely the FINAL version of .NET 4.5 SHOULD support available and supported Operating Systems....?

Thanks

Andrew