Where is Visual Studio 2005 Express?

Question

I'm working on a project that requires Visual Studio 2005 and I've been trying to find a legitimate download site for Visual Studio 2005 Express, but it seems like Microsoft only wants people to download the 2008 version instead.

Anyone knows why it's like this and if there is some link somewhere where Visual Studio 2005 Express is available?

Answer 1

why don't you get VS 2008? and they say that your project is a .NET 2.0 project? or you are editing a .NET 1.x project?

With VS 2008 (express or not) you can target the projects to what framework you want!

Answer 2

As far as I know, VS 2005 Express is "No longer available."

That said ... Balexandre is right: Get 2k8, and set your project up to the correct framework.

Answer 3

I belive that VS 2008 (all editions) will only work with .NET 2.0 to 3.5 just as VS 2005 (all editions) will only work with .NET 2.0. This is the reason that VS 2005 is no longer available, because it's features are duplicated by VS 2008. The only differences is the solution file, so you could make a seperate solution file for VS 2008.

Answer 4

If you are willing to pay a few bucks, you could buy a "Learning Visual C# 2005" book.
Some of them have a CD with C# 2005 Express, and the books should be quite cheap now because they are for C# 2005.

For example, you can get this German book with CD at the German Amazon for 1.95 Euros (used, and plus shipping).
Of course you would have to find one in English or Swedish, but you get the idea :-)

Answer 5

You can get from thepiratebay.org

It's perfect legal.

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4773985/Visual_Studio_2005_Express

Answer 6

http://webkoleji.net/visual/ has direct links to the Microsoft downloads. I haven't actually executed any of them.

Here are more links: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/Vsexpressvcs/thread/290fb587-1447-466c-9149-a692fa5de34d They seem to point to the same files.

The direct download link: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=51411&clcid=0x409

Answer 7

For Visual Studios 2005 C++ express the vcsteup.exe is available here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/3/a/83aad8f9-38ba-4503-b3cd-ba28c360c27b/ENU/vcsetup.exe

I found this link here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/Vsexpressvc/thread/aa4a3808-b0da-4afb-ac19-ac45582bb58a

Answer 8

In case anyone else needs the VS 2005 Express Editions for whatever reason (e.g. I needed this particular version a while ago to verify/reproduce a bug), this page: http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2006/03/28/563660.aspx has links to all versions (Visual Basic, C++, C#, J#) which still seem to be working.

Answer 9

Thanks for the links. Even though most of the functionality of VS2005 is duplicated in VS2008, there are a few features that require VS2005. ASP Classic is deprecated in VS2008, so you need VS2005 to get intellisense and color coding support for ASP Classic projects.