VS2010 doesn't appear in my apps windows 8

Question

Mine is a Windows 8 machine. I installed Visual Studio 2012, then went to Microsoft SQL Server 2012. Later I was told to install Visual Studio 2010. The first two installs worked great. Got all the neat icons and everything is good. MSVS2010 SP1 got installed successfully.

Now the third install of Visual Studio 2010 is where I am stuck. I am downloading it from a Microsoft licensed CD. No errors during installation, but it is only installing Microsoft Visual Studio command prompt, X64 Win64 command prompt and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 documentation. Nothing else. So basically I dunno where to start to fire up the program.

So I went to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7, C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7 to find the devenv.exe. Couldn't find in either of the locations.

Then went to Run and typed devenv.exe, boom VS2010 opens. So I did a Apps search on Windows 8. When I type devenv.exe the only thing I could find there is SQL Server data tools which has a VS2010 icon. Double click this and VS 2010 opens. So my guess is SQL server 2012 needs VS2010 and installed it.

Questions:

1. Where is devenv.exe?
2. Why isn't it installing the rest of the stuff?
3. How do I start VS2010?

I don't think double clicking on sql server data tools is the correct way. I want VS2010 to appear in my Apps just like any other application. This could be a rather silly question. I did a lot of research and am kinda confused with all these parameters.

Solution 1

In Windows 8, if you search for "Visual Studio" in "Start" screen you won't find VS 2010. Instead search for "devenv", it appears.

Searching for "SQL server data tools" also will work.

In 64bit machines, you can find 2010 in

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE

Create a Desktop short cut.

Solution 2

Uninstalling and re installing Visual Studios is not required for the Visual Studio 2010 icon to show up on Windows 8.The Visual Studio 2010 icon is located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv. You can add this icon to your task bar or windows desktop and launch Visual Studio 2010. There are two devenv icons in that folder location just select latest one you can find that out by looking at the file properties. The folder path I mentioned above will be different for 64 bit windows machines.

Comments

[Grayson]

This worked for me for vs 2008 an 2010. Thanks. Strange part of this is when I added them to the start screen it actually added them with the wrong program name. They seemed to add as SQL programs, like SQL Server Manager. They went even named as the same wrong program. Its like windows 8 just randomly picked the name or a program I had installed and decided to run with it. This happened with 2008 and 2010. I had to right click then open the containing folder then rename the shortcut accordingly. Very strange.