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Visual Studio Incompatibility Hits Vista

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

September 27, 2006, 2:49 PM

Microsoft acknowledged Tuesday that developers looking to build applications on Windows Vista will need to upgrade to Visual Studio 2005 SP1, highlighting compatibility issues the company is dealing with as the new operating system nears release.

Both Visual Studio 2002 and 2003 will not work on Vista, and the most recent update to Visual Studio 2005, Service Pack 1, will likely have compatibility problems. Microsoft is working hard to resolve those issues before Vista ships. Developers can continue to use Windows XP to build applications that also run on Vista.

The primary issue behind the incompatibility is the .NET Framework. Windows Vista will ship with version 3.0 of the .NET Framework, while older versions of Visual Studio stop at 1.0. An add-in to VS 2005 offers .NET Framework 3.0 support atop its native 2.0, along with support for Vista and Office 2007.

Microsoft says it is endeavoring to make sure all .NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0 applications will continue to work in the new operating system, but there are numerous bugs still to work out. Support for Visual Studio 6.0 applications is also in the works.

"We had a choice to make internally – hold up VS 2005 SP1 till we get the fixes in or decouple and ship VS 2005 SP1 as soon as possible knowing that we have to provide fixes for some of those Vista compatibility issues later," explained Soma Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Developer Division. "Based on your feedback of having SP1 for VS 2005 soon, we decided to separate the two."

VS 2005 SP1 was released in beta form Tuesday, with a final release expected in 3 to 4 months. It addresses feedback provided by customers and gathered through internal testing, a company spokesperson said. Microsoft will provide an upgrade to SP1 after that in order to add support for Windows Vista.

"Visual Studio 2005 SP1 will run on Vista but will likely have a few compatibility issues," added Somasegar. "We are working with the Vista team to understand those, to provide workarounds where possible and also work on providing you with a set of fixes beyond SP1."

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By manohar

edited Aug 1, 2007 - 3:16 AM

visual studio 2003 hangs up if i search for a string in current project.. It has got a major repainting issue. pulling my hairs off to work with this *sigh*

Score: 0

By KishoreSP

edited Oct 5, 2006 - 12:05 AM

Vista has to support the Application build using VS.NET 1.1v and 2.0v without any compatilblity issues. Otherwise, it will create uncertainity for easily adoption of Microsoft Products in future.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Sep 28, 2006 - 11:11 AM

Current program is incompatible with an unreleased OS?

*gasp*

I'm shocked...

Score: 0

By toddhd

posted Sep 28, 2006 - 9:20 AM

This surprised me. I've been using VS.NET 2005 and Vista for a while now (at home, not in production work). I haven't seen any problems. The article says that the problem is that Vista ships with .NET 3.0, but that doesn't mean that you can't install .NET 2.0, and for what its worth, .NET 3.0 is really a misnomer anyway. It isn't really so much a new version of the CLR binaries, it's more like "add ons" to work with the WinFX and Workflow foundations, etc. Nonetheless, I'm glad to hear that they are working on it, and that SP1 is on its way.

Score: 0

By leojei

posted Sep 28, 2006 - 9:00 AM

huh? VS.net 2003 wont work? But I'm using it in build 5728 and it works just as fine...~ weird..~

Score: 0

By Dan K

edited Sep 29, 2006 - 5:03 PM

Heh, try doing 'Find in Files' in a WinForms project. It hangs for me every time on Vista build 5600 and 5728. I didn't realise how often I used find in files until now. :(

Score: 0

By jcsalem

edited Feb 27, 2007 - 4:51 PM

The Find in Files problem can be fixed by checking the 'Disable Visual Themes' checkbox on the Compatibility tab for the shortcut that launches VS.NET 2003.

Bizarre, eh? But it really works. Here's another posting on the issue:
http://forums.microsoft....id=1280229&siteid=1

I've had good luck running VS2003 on Vista once I made that change.

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Sep 27, 2006 - 5:58 PM

.net is a boondogle. Years now, What has it given the end user?

Score: 0

By msoftisslipping

edited Feb 19, 2007 - 1:51 PM

.net has given us nothing but problems.
I have been able to run circles around the other developers in the office that are using .net.
The net result to the end user is much longer development time and lack of flexibility to make quick changes to the application based on changing business needs.
If your business is very simplistic or never changes, you might be able to get away with using .net, otherwise the economics are just not there.

Score: 0

By templar™

posted Sep 27, 2006 - 7:25 PM

Wow. Such ignorance.

Many web-based apps are .NET-based. Many PDA apps are .NET-based. Of course, many desktop apps are .NET-based too. Some you may not have known it's .NET-based, such as nLite.

And yeah, I hate to say this: ATI Catalyst Control Center is a .NET app. And this is the worst yet probably the most popular .NET app to date.

Score: 0

By Arakiel

edited Sep 27, 2006 - 6:16 PM

Your kidding right?

faster, easier development
thus more products to choose from
thus more choice
faster, easier development also = more new features quicker to market
more stable products (you have to TRY to create a memory leak in .net unless the developer is truly clueless)
.net applications have no need for the registry ... nuff said

Can you do the things .net does in a non-.net language? of course you can, but .net gets the job done faster, more reliably, and with better maintainability.

Score: 0

By fewt

posted Sep 28, 2006 - 5:54 AM

.NET applications sure can use the registry, however no language REQUIRES using the registry.

Score: 0

By Arakiel

edited Sep 28, 2006 - 8:19 AM

I didnt say .net apps COULDNT, I said there was no NEED to.

no LANGUAGE requires the registry its true, but .NET isnt a language. Its an underlying architecture like COM. And yes if you write a COM application (the foundation of most pre-.net windows applications) it IS in the registry, period, full stop. Any COM component MUST use the registry.

Score: 0

By rayz66

posted Sep 28, 2006 - 4:21 AM

You don't have to store stuff in the registry?

Where does it put settings and stuff then?

Score: 0

By spiked

posted Sep 28, 2006 - 7:11 AM

In XML config files. By default, the config file for a .NET exe would be the name of the exe follwed by .config (example: program.exe.config) located in the same path as the exe. For a web app (ASP.NET), you can have an web.config file located in the app directory which inherits/overrides: web.config files in parent directories (if any, up to the virtual root of the app) plus the machine's web.config and machine.config files which are stored in the Framework directories (example: C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG). A web server can have multiple versions of the framework being used by different apps, and each app can be configured independently to use a different version.

A config file is not completely made up of application-level "settings." Most config files contain runtime configuration for the program. Look for the if you want to find purely app-specific settings. All together, however, stuff in the config files is stuff which would have typically gone in the registry before .NET.

Microsoft's config files are 100% standard XML (no qualifications, no fine print; this is NOT like the Office XML file formats) and there are XSD schemas you can validate them against. The proceduere to integrate the XSD files into Visual Studio is a pain but it can be done.

Keep in mind that this is simply what the .NET Framework provides to programmers. It's not unusual to find programmers who choose to store their settings elsewhere, either because they don't fully understand how to work with the config files, or because their app requirements were not well suited for XML config files, or because they ported old apps to .NET and wanted to change as little as possible.

Score: 0

By _lost_

posted Sep 27, 2006 - 3:28 PM

I still have to wait another 3-4 months!?! They promised SP1 at the end of Q2, then Q3 and now Q4! This is taking too long!!!!

Score: 0

By Fidelio

posted Sep 28, 2006 - 12:37 AM

Well... what do you prefer? An early release full of bugs, of the reliability you are already used to, in a delayed release?

I would go with the second...

Score: 0

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