Has anyone managed to get Visual Studio 2003 running on Windows 7?

Question

Yes, I know... I could set up a virtual machine running XP. Unfortunately our build environment is such that we need to be running VC2003, 2005 and 2008 concurrently and it would be much more convenient if I could run 2003 natively on Windows 7 for the few projects we have that require it.

I realize some things may not be available in the IDE, but I was able to run 2003 under windows Vista and if I could get the same base level of functionality under Windows 7 I would be extremely happy.

Right now I get an error opening the *.pdb file when I compile after switching vc2003 to run as Administrator under compatibility mode for XP SP 2.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Give XP Mode a try if you can't get it to run natively.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Answer 2

I wrote a blog entry about this a while back that you can check out - http://technikhil.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/visual-studio-2003-and-windows-7-can-get-along-really/

The only thing I am stuck on right now is the global search functionality of VS 2003 - it hangs the application. My workaround is to use windows 7 search :-). Other than that - so far so good...

Update: I got the search to work as well by disabling the Aero functionality - I have updated my blog post with the details...