Visual Studio 2008 on Windows 7 beta

Question

I'm considering a full upgrade to Windows 7 Beta, thus wiping Vista from my HD.

Will Visual Studio 2008 run well on Windows 7? I've read some forum posts that there were problems.

Answer 1

If you want to check out Windows 7 I would go with doing a VM installation instead of the full thing. At lest until it gets to the RC stage.

Answer 2

One of my co-workers has dual-booted Windows 7 Beta and Vista and he's been developing with Visual Studio 2008 in Windows 7 just fine. But that's just one person's experience, I'm sure as a whole there will be problems.

Answer 3

Windows 7 is very stable and very fast, if you know what you are doing and willing to take a small risk, there's no need for VM installation. Visual Studio 2008 Professional works without any problems on it (at least as far as I could see). I'm typing this from Windows 7 machine that is running VS2008 with Windows Mobile SDK 6 with no problems.

Answer 4

For me, it has worked great on Windows 7. I swear, it crashes far less on 7 than it did on Vista - I've been delighted. Not saying it's going to work that great for everyone, but I certainly hope it does for you if you give it a try!

Answer 5

It seems to be working great for me with one (big) exception: any time I try to open a xaml file in the WPF designer, it crashes. Other than that, I love using the beta 7 - it seems a little more speedy than Vista.

Updated for anyone with same problem: solved it by uninstalling Silverlight. Can't say that was definitely the problem but worked for me...

Answer 6

John Robbins, among others, found a problem that was documented in the Win7 SDK release notes. See http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jrobbins/archive/2009/01/24/the-case-of-the-corrupt-pe-binaries.aspx for John's problem and the search for an answer.

See http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/8/0/8808A472-6450-4723-9C87-977069714B27/ReleaseNotes.Htm for the Win7 SDK release notes.

Answer 7

I have an issue with VS2008 SP1 on Win7 beta. In the LINQ to SQL (DBML) designer, the tables disappear when I mouse over them. I have tried searching but haven't found any mention of this anywhere.

This was an upgrade from Vista SP1 which already had VS2008 SP1 installed. I will try later with a clean Win7 install I have (haven't installed VS2008 on that one yet). Other than this I have not had any problems at all. Vista to Win7 upgrade worked great.

---

EDIT: I should add, these are both VistaSP1 x64 and Win7 x64. Maybe it doesn't happen in the 32-bit version of Win7. Can anyone confirm?

UPDATE: I have done a clean Win7 install with VS2008 SP1 and the DBML tables still disappear. It not that big a deal right now for me, only annoying.

---

EDIT: Also, I sometimes have files locked in Win7 for no apparent reason. I can't rename or delete the file, and I can't find what process has it locked with procexp or the Windows Resource Monitor. Apparently only happens with exe files. I tried uninstalling antivirus software, TortoiseSVN, or anything that might be locking files. In relation to VS2008, I randomly get this error when compiling:

Unable to copy file "obj\Debug\HelloWorld.exe" to "bin\Debug\HelloWorld.exe". The process cannot access the file 'bin\Debug\HelloWorld.exe' because it is being used by another process.

I end up dismounting/remounting the drive or rebooting Windows to make it let go of the file.

---

EDIT: VS2008 SP1 DBML designer issue fixed as of Win7 build 7057! :D

Answer 8

Works great, apart from the fact that the designers (Linq To Sql, Entity Framework, Class Designer...) have a nasty refresh problem.

Basically every time your mouse hover over an class, the class blanks out, making it difficult to edit the diagram.

Not a show-stopper but an annoyance.

Answer 9

i cant upgrade it as i usually do on vista and xp... please help me

Answer 10

I've installed VS 2008 Team Suite 90-days Trial. Then SP1. Then I was going to upgrade through Control panel->Programs and Features as usual. But there's NO such option in VS's setup ! Has anybody upgrade VS from trial on Windows 7 ?

Answer 11

I work in Windows 7 till January and have no big problems (only bugs that are been fixed thru build upgrade). I use Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite, and it works fine!

But I got a problem - I cannot install ADO.NET Entity Framework 1.0 Beta 3 x86 on current build 7068. I got an error: "ADO.NET Entity Framework 1.0 (Pre-Release Version) can only be installed if Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 is installed".

In fact, it's installed. Does anybody know how to fix such issue?

Answer 12

Windows 7 is nothing more than Vista with new desktop wallpapers and the UAC turned down 1 notch. Same exact trash under the hood though.

I'm currently on Windows 7 RC1 Build 7100 (x64) and Viual Studio 2008 Professional is having a terrible time.

You can't modify code during debug unless you set the compilation of your app to be processor specific (x86).

All breakpoints are non-functional in that they turn white with exclamation points stating that your code is not in the same place as the origional even though you may have JUST started debugging. The suggested fixes (select to ignore) do not fix the problem.

Your app will throw an error and the GUI will return a msg stating that there is no source code where the current exception took place.

Another screwy aspect is while debugging, your application may trigger an error when it wasn't before. Then the same function wont produce an error and everything is fine again. Then two minutes later that same function will produce a completely different error. You can get up to five different errors from the GUI, all jibberish, letting you know that it really doesn't know what happened.

I can get away with writing some simplistic programs without any problems but when it comes time for any complexity or seriousness I'm dealing with massive failures.

For me to remain productive, it's back to the fast, reliable, consistent, Windows XP.

Answer 13

NOTE: If I could I'd have done this as a comment on Ross's post.

Windows 7 is NOT just vista with new wallpapers, from experience over the last few releases it's extremely more efficient (and noticeably faster) in comparison with vista.

Also Ross, your errors which are happening on and off are more likely to be timing errors rather than Windows 7 errors. It would be a good idea to test this in another OS just to check. I've never had any issues with breakpoints since the pre-beta either.

Anyway, as far as your question goes, the only problems I've encountered is one the first pre-beta version of Windows 7 where it was giving my some very odd issues with port numbers when setting up a WCF connection.

Another weird fix came when installing VS SP1, however this has been fixed since the latest release of Win 7.

We also has issues when installing Microsoft Blend 2 and Visual Studio whereby you needed to install in a certain order, again this has been fixed since the RC.

As you can tell from my experiences, I haven't had any major issues when using the release candidate which is what most people are using now.

Answer 14

The only thing I've found so far, but it annoys the hell out of me, is that if I do anything with Import Export Settings, it hangs Visual Studio something fierce. Apparently, the Xaml "Package" or whatever is corrupted, even on an absolutely clean install.

I'm attempting a repair of the whole app.

Answer 15

I have win7 x64 RC Build 7100. I am having some very strange issues with Visual Studio 2008 Pro SP1. When developing a web application I cannot add any Web Content Forms. I can add web forms but when using the Web Content Form I do not get the 2nd dialog allowing me to select the master page. It just never comes up. This has become quite annoying. I can however create a content form by right clicking on the master page and selected "Create Content Form". Other than that I have no issues running VS2008 SP1 under Win7 x64.

Answer 16

I'm running VS 2008 SP1 on Windows 7 (x64) Build 7100 and have found some issues with the development server, and every now and then when I switch over to the design view, VS will completely lock up. Most commonly, however, when I am trying to debug my webapp, the development server part will indicate that it is not responding and cause the debugger to notify me that a safe handle has been closed. Usually, all I have to do is re-issue the debug 'go' command and then the new instance of development server will work for a few more debugs until acting up all over again. Definately nothing to keep one from upgrading to 7 from vista, but still annoying none the less.

Maybe I should invest more time on creating code that doesn't require so much debugging ;)

Answer 17

I installed VS 2008 on Windows 7 Home Premium x64 RTM. Installs fine but runs a bit slow. The big problem is that I cannot run the debugger, Constantly get errors about not finding files etc. It isnt the projects themselves as they were written on and ran perfectly on Windows Vista x64 RTM. The only way to check that the program I am writing works is to save/build both the solution and application. Then go to the bin/debug directory and run the compiled exe file directly. Also found that VS2008sp1 refuses to install

I am about to reformat my system and try a clean install. Tried uninstalling VS2008 but not everything is removed and I am unable to re-install VS2008 as the setup "hangs" permanently.

Major headache as now I have to spend about 2 days re-installing Windows 7 and all my programs, configuring everything and then HOPE VS2008 works.

maybe if I install VS2008 directly after Windows 7 and BEFORE my other programs. That was something that was occasionally necessary on Vista x64.

Answer 18

Okay. Re-installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 x64 Home Premium and then immediately installed Visual Studio 2008 Enterprise and it worked fine. So any glitch was caused by some 3rd party software that was installed BEFORE VS2008. Not sure which one but will run VS2008 test project after each 3rd party software installation to try and track it down. It still runs a bit slow but each time I run the test project it seems to run faster and more smoothly.

Answer 19

Just want to ask if anyone know why i'm getting blue screen of death when installing visual studio 08 ts on my win7_64bit b7600? the os works fine during normal use. i only have 2gb ram, and no dedicated graphics.

Answer 20

I can't make a setup vs2008 pro with windows 7 b7600

Answer 21

I need help , but I am putting this over here as well . I have windows 7 x86 RC, On y may machine. I am not able to open a web prjoect. Visual Studio just hangs . I have tried both 2005/2008 . I have tried loading form file system as well

Answer 22

Installed VS2008 (Pro) and SP1 on Win7 (Pro) Retail full version. Frankly there are nightmare issues and I'm considering going back ti XP for a while.

Developing MFC C++: Issues: VS2008 Add Exisiting Item to Project. The File Dialog does not allow Ctrl+ Left Click to select more than one file at a time. SO it becomes a real PITA to add 10 files to a project.

Open .rc file from another project no longer allows drag and drop to current project rc file. In fact it crashes VS2008 every time. I tired 3 times. This feature has worked and does work on VS2008 on XP and all previous VS all the way back to VS4

Win7: Using file open dialog does not allow use of the mouse wheel, and if I click in the file listing view the stupid single click opens a file I don't want so I have to use the stupid VScroll bar.

Win7: After fighting all the "Access Denied" crap and getting it setup somewhat the way I like to use Windows it seems to be reasonable when running the few other programs I've installed so far. I guess I'm just fighting the learning curve as I bypassed Vista.
I can't say I see much difference in speed comapred to XP it's the same. My hardware is reasonable (dual (dual core) Xeon 2.8GHz gobs of mem and hd space etc.etc.)

Answer 23

It should run fine now its RTM