title WebLog #535 Topic: 2008-02-03 12.48.37 matt: bypassing the visual studio 2003 upgrade check
user matt
ip 64.142.12.187
vol 1

  Many moons ago, I had my Visual Studio 2002 CDs and was able to use my VS 2003 upgrade. Those CDs are long gone and I had to cheat a bit.


/more


  The long and the short of it is that the VS 2003 upgrade installer just looks for the following key:

/pre(
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect - English
/pre)

... and the following value:
/pre(
UninstallPath
/pre)

That value need to have a string value that contains the full path to a program that will have an exit code of 0. (I used "c:\windows\notepad.exe")

Run the install, Enter your product key, click continue, you'll see notepad pop up. Close it, and the install will continue.


PS: Some of you may be wondering why I'm installing VS2003. Well, the XBox Dev Kit won't install properly without it. I'm installing the XDK to see if I can get some of these emulators to compile a working XBE using the (better optimizing) cl.exe from VC++ 2008.

/discussion