Visual Studio 2008 C++ language support?

Question

I've been developing a couple of C# tools recently, but primarily working with a lot of legacy Visual Basic 6.0 code (I know, I know...). For the C# development, I've been using Visual Studio 2008 Professional edition that I downloaded using our MSDN subscription here at work.

But, as a change of pace over the weekend, I was going to check out a complex C++ project that we have. However, when I went to open it through Visual Studio, it wouldn't open it saying that the .vcproj file type wasn't supported. I figured it was a compatibility issue and that the project file type had changed between versions of Visual Studio, but when I tried creating a new C++ application inside Visual Studio 2008 Pro, the option just wasn't there.

I've been searching online by way of Bing, Google, MSDN, and MSDN subscriber downloads to no avail. Nothing I've found so far explains why this is happening.

I have found the express edition of MS Visual C++ 2008, but I could not locate the "full version" of this part of Visual Studio.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

It sounds like you haven't got it installed.

Go to Add/Remove Programs (or Programs and Features, or whatever Windows 7 calls it) and modify your installation. You'll get a list of checkboxes so you can install C#, VB.NET, Crystal Reports etc... and Visual C++. Check that checkbox and wait the hour or so for the installer to do its stuff.