Installing .NET 1.1 on Windows 10

VirtualCenter client 1.3 needs .NET v1.1!

Yes, I know this is crazy but… I don’t know if anyone else would care.  Windows 10 (7 & 8 as well, I guess…) include a .NET 2.0 option or a 3.5 which includes 2.0 install but if you need the first real ‘release’ version of .NET v1.1 you cannot install it.  And some applications were pretty much hard coded to 1.1, even though the whole point of .NET was to avoid this kind of version/DLL hell.

.NET 1.1 setup  From here it’s all failure.

Well, I had come across this great post here on techjourney.net.  And yes, it sounds crazy, but it works!

All you need to do is download the version 1.1 framework + SP 1, and slipstream the SP 1 patch into the directory and run the setup..

  • dotnetfx.exe /c:”msiexec.exe /a netfx.msi TARGETDIR=C:\DotNet”
  • dotnetfxsp1.exe /Xp:C:\DotNet\netfxsp.msp
  • Run netfx.msi that was created in C:\DotNet\

I’ve gone ahead and combined the .NET v1.1 framework + SP1 into this zip file: dotnet1.1-withsp1.zip, so you can bypass those steps, and just go.  No more bizarre errors about the debugger not finding itself and crashing out the installer.

VMware VirtualCenter on Windows 10

And now I can manage my nested VMware ESX 2.5.2 cluster on Windows 10 natively as managing from a VM just wasn’t the great experience I’d been hoping for.

Visual Studio Community 2013 with Update 4

Visual Studio Community 2013 update 4

Free stuff!

If you are like me buying a compiler is something I don’t do terribly often.  Or I end up doing it for projects or even worse, I end up using old versions I bought over 10 years ago, because Visual C++ 5.0 should be good enough for anyone, right? (I also own Visual Studio 2003, so it’s not THAT bad….)

So it was interesting that Microsoft released Visual Studio Community & Express as part of their Connect (); event.  It’s a whopper of a download though, a 6GB iso file.

I haven’t installed it yet, I’m actually still downloading it.  But it certainly implies that it is far more capable than the older Express Editions.

And of course, for the upcoming 2015 release:

“Built from the ground up with support for iOS, Android and Windows, Visual Studio 2015 Preview makes it easier for developers to build applications and services for any device, on any platform.”

Not to mention they are also apparently going to open up the source to .NET .  The press release also claims:

expanding .NET to run on the Linux and Mac OS platforms.

I guess that’ll only be a matter of time to tell.

If anything it’ll be a good excuse to crank out some Quake benchmarks.

Visual Studio 2005 Express editions

I found myself in need for J# of all things for something with work.  J# is the MS answer to migrating Java code to .net.

Anyways it turns out I was able to find the web installer, but the link for generating a license code no longer exists.  However, the ISO’s never needed the code.  Except they aren’t available for download.

Or so I thought.

Turns out they are still there, but MS pulled the pages.

I figure it’ll help someone out there.

Installing Visual Studio 2003 on CrossOver (OS X)

First run the ‘setup.exe’ from the prerequisite CD-ROM.

Set the supported application type to “Microsoft Office 2003”, and place it in a new bottle.

Step 1

Step 1

Pre-requisites install

Components install

This will be counter intuitive.

Screen Shot 2014-01-20 at 5.50.56 PM

Answer no, and the needed components will install.

Pre-requ

Pre-requisites

Don’t worry the .net 1.1 runtime & the j# .net redistributable package will both fail.  It is nothing to worry about as we need to install them manually.

Everything is fine!

Everything is fine!

CrossOver will then notice that something went wrong.  We just tell it to ignore the step, and pretend everything is OK.

Screen Shot 2014-01-20 at 5.53.02 PM

Just ‘Skip This Step’ and all is well.

Now that the bottle is ‘setup’ we manually install the .net 1.1 framework.  First tell the installer that we are going to install the runtime component .NET Framework 1.1.

I just point the installer to the CD’s ‘dotNetFramework’ directory to the dotnetfx.exe.

Install .net 1.1

Install .net 1.1

And let it install.

Next, I install the J# Runtime.  First select the ‘other’ application type, then I select the JSharpRedistCore directory and the vjredist.exe

J# Runtime Install

J# Runtime Install

This should install just fine.

Next, it’s time to install the MDAC 2.7 sp1 components.  I select MDAC 2.71 Serivce Pack 1, then point the installer to the MDAC27SP1 directory, and select the mdac_typ.exe installer

MDAC Installation

MDAC Installation

And the MDAC components should install without issue.

Now for some reason I’ve had issues swapping CD’s so I ‘cheat’ and do the following:

Screen Shot 2014-01-20 at 6.04.22 PMPrograms -> Run Command, then open up the ‘Debug Options’ and choose Open Shell.

From here I simply do this:

$ cd ‘/Users/neozeed/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/Microsoft Visual Studio 2003/drive_c’
drive_c neozeed$ mkdir temp
drive_c neozeed$ mkdir vs2003
drive_c neozeed$ cd vs2003
vs2003 neozeed$ cp -R /Volumes/VSPROD2/* .
vs2003 neozeed$ cp -R /Volumes/VSPROD1/* .
cd ..

Now we can go ahead and install Visual Studio.

Choose

Lets choose the right setup.exe

I find it easier to ‘Open the C: Drive’ which will take us to the 2003 folder, then we can choose the vs2003\setup\setup.exe executable.  The vs2003\setup.exe will take note that the pre-requisites are installed, then just exit.

Use the ‘other application’ template, and make sure it is installing to the bottle you’ve been installing to so far!

Running Setup

Choosing Setup

Assuming you’ve done this right, it’ll take a while

Screen Shot 2014-01-20 at 6.13.34 PMAnd with any luck you’ll finally see this!

Visual

Visual Studio 2003 EULA

Now you can select what to install

Selecting components

Selecting components

And again this will take a few minutes.

Final Failure..

Final Failure..

Then it bombs out with a Failed LookupAccountNameW:   … which I think a few installers bomb on stuff like this.  So close.

Anyways it’ll install but not work. 🙁

Sorry to get your hopes up, I know I’m kinda disappointed.

Aeon

I came across this 386 emulator, Aeon(updated to use archive.org, as it’s dead now). What is interesting is that it’s written in C#!

That’s right it’s all managed code…!

If you can run .net 4.0 you may want to check it out, it’s quite capable….

Doom on AeonYes it can run doom!

The DPMI is good enough to run doom, and quake! While slower then DosBOX, I’d still say it’s a contender, you can never have too many possibilities…