Installing VS2005 on Windows 7

Question

I'm trying to install Visual Studio 2005 on a Windows 7 box but am repeatedly getting the same error. When I run the installer it starts to run then pops up with a message saying:

"A problem has been encountered while loading the setup components. Canceling setup."

Various suggestions has said that maybe the install is corrupted so I downloaded a fresh copy of the ISO from MSDN today, same issue. Another suggestion is that installing from the ISO may be the issue so I extracted the contents of the ISO to a folder on my HDD, same issue. I have also tried running the files as administrator and in XP compatability mode, same issue.

Searching for this issue the most common responses I've found have been about installing SP1, however I cannot get the base product to install and therefore cannot apply SP1.

Does anyone have any further suggestions as to what I can do to fix this issue and get VS2005 installed? If anyone wants any log files of any variety I am happy to supply so long as you tell me where to look as I'm not sure.

As for why I am using VS2005 and not a newer product, it is required for the ongoing support and maintenance of some older applications we manage. These cannot be easily migrated to a newer version of Visual Studio without some considerable investment of time and that would probably be longer than the time it will take to develop newer, replacement applications (which is currently in progress). Until the new applications are available though we need to maintain an environment to use.

Answer 1

Did you try running setup.exe in compatibility mode with Windows XP? Some discussion here on how to do this.

Another alternative since you alluded to having an MSDN subscription. Download Windows XP and install it into a VM. (If HyperV isn't already in installed with your Win7, you can add it from Control Panel->Programs&Features->Turn Windows Features on/off). Then install VS2005 from there.