Installing Visual Studio for C++ Development

Installing Visual Studio for .NET development is pretty easy: Install Visual Studio and the latest service pack. You’re done.

Installing Visual Studio for C++ development is fraught with problems (ok that’s perhaps a bit dramatic). In most cases you not only need Visual Studio and its service pack, but you also need the latest Windows SDK. Since Visual Studio SP1 was released I’ve had some of my installations fail, or worse, just corrupt my build environment. I couldn’t figure out why it would fail some of the time. I eventually pinged Stephan (STL) on the Visual C++ team who pointed out that the Windows SDK installation corrupts the SP1 build environment. Anyway, here is the order in which you must install everything in order for it to work.

1. Visual Studio 2008

2. Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008

3. Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1

If you did step 3 before step 2 you need to rerun step 3 which is extremely tedious. Also, since the Visual Studio installation is so complex, I’ve found its less painful to simply reinstall Windows than to try upgrading or repairing a broken installation.

If you follow the steps above you shouldn’t have any problems. Hope that helps.

Produce the highest quality screenshots with the least amount of effort! Use Window Clippings.

No Comments