For the question on archive.org about how to install, there’s a few options. It’s been a while since doing this, so I might be forgetting things. The newest system I’ve installed this on is Server 2022, there may be changes in later versions (although that seems unlikely by this point.)

One simple option is just to set the registry key indicating .NET 1.1 is already installed to trick the installer into not trying to install it. See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/migration-guide/how-to-determine-which-versions-are-installed (scroll to the bottom for 1.1.)

I think rather than 7z I’ve just been finding the component files by running the installer and pulling them out of the temp directory. Most importantly, there’s one “Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003.msi” file which is 7Mb and is really the compiler installer. The other 75% of this package is .NET, which isn’t needed at all. So copy that file out, and install it in isolation. Really, this whole product would be better if it was just that 7Mb file.

The reason I’ve been doing this is the .msi has a check for Windows 2000 or above, which the compiler doesn’t need. So open the .msi in Orca, remove LaunchCondition, and save. (Orca is super fussy – don’t Save As or anything, it’ll break horribly.) The resulting .msi can install this thing in NT 4, including Terminal Server. From memory, the corresponding 2003 SDKs already install in NT 4 just fine.

You found it on archive.org. Maybe just use Enterprise 2003 if that’s what you want. Or a vintage OS, or something like sandboxie.

Heh, and a nice way to drop a compiler with an optimizer into the standard edition which didn’t have one…

I never knew there was a 1.01, at the time it was a super convenient way to ‘drop’ in the newer compiler onto older VC installs, using the old libs and includes…

It’s nice the whole page is archived as well, cool!

“The Visual C++ Toolkit 2003, version 1.01 (released July 6, 2004) supplants version 1.0 (released April 16, 2004). Version 1.01 updates the included Visual C++ compiler to exactly match the compiler that ships with Visual Studio .NET 2003 (build 13.10.3077). In the initial 1.0 Toolkit release, the build numbers of the compilers differed slightly. Version 1.01 of the Toolkit also corrects some minor grammatical issues in the sample whitepapers and in the command prompt window.”

It sounds like you have 1.0 then, but it probably doesn’t matter, because the page also says:

“There are no compilation-related behavior changes in the Toolkit version 1.01 from version 1.0.”