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I was wondering what versions of visual studio are compatible with Vista?

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Short answer: Visual Studio 2008 is the safest pick for running on Windows Vista; older IDEs can run but expect UAC-related warnings or extra steps. already pointed to Microsoft's compatibility notes, and 's experience with startup warnings is exactly the kind of behavior to expect from older releases.

Concrete steps to avoid trouble:

  • Install the latest service pack for whatever Visual Studio you use and any official Vista compatibility updates Microsoft provides for that release.
  • Keep projects and build outputs out of Program Files — put them under your user profile (Documents) to avoid permission problems and file virtualization.
  • When you must register components, attach to system processes, or use IIS, launch Visual Studio with elevated rights (right-click -> Run as administrator) rather than disabling UAC system-wide.
  • If a build or debugger fails with “access denied,” verify file/registry permissions, or run the Visual Studio Command Prompt elevated for registration tasks.

Notes for web and legacy development: running IIS7 on Vista introduces extra permission and feature steps (enable IIS components in Windows Features and run VS elevated to attach to IIS worker processes). Very old tools (Visual Studio 6) are effectively unsupported on Vista — they may run with warnings but can break in subtle ways; if full compatibility is required, use a VM (Windows XP) for that legacy workflow.

Quick checklist if something goes wrong: confirm service packs/patches, run IDE elevated for privileged ops, move projects to a user-writable folder, check plug-ins/add-ins for Vista compatibility, or run the older IDE inside a VM.

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Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

I have not seen any problems using VC++ 2005 Express or VC++ 6.0 in Vista Home. They produce a few warning messages when started but ignoring them does not seem to do any harm. Could be because I don't write programs that take advantage of any new Vista features. I have not tried it yet but I would imagine the compatibility problems are resulved with VC++ 2008

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