Installing Visual Studio 2005 on Windows 10

Question

Is it possible to install Visual Studio 2005 on Windows 10?

I need to maintain a legacy application that targets .NET Framework 2.0, so I need to use this version of Visual Studio.

Solution

It is not supported, but it works as far as I have tried. Coincidentally, I came here after I searched about the same thing while I was installing Visual Studio 2005 Professional on Windows 10 64 bit. I have some old VS 2005 C++ source that someone has given me to modify.

After the installation of VS 2005 was complete, I installed the following two updates in this order:

1. VS80sp1-KB926601-X86-ENU.exe -> Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite Service Pack 1
2. VS80sp1-KB932232-X86-ENU.exe -> Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista

Look for these on Google to find download links from MSDN. After installing these updates, I just launched VS 2005, and so far, everything has worked fine. The app is running, there are no errors, builds are fine, and I can use VS 2005 as always.