Is it okay to uninstall Visual Studio .NET 1.0 (and related questions)?

Factual Questions
1

My system is Windows XP Professional. I have VS .NET 1.0 and VS .NET 1.1 both installed. I do realize that they don’t interfere with one another.

In my Control Panel Add or Remove Programs window, there are listings for the following:

Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable — 5.21 megabytes

It says that I last used this on 11/12/2008, which is a lie. I have never used it, at least not to my knowledge.

Microsoft Visual J# .NET Redistributable Package 1.1 — 12.94 megabytes

It says that I use this “frequently”, and that the last time I used it was 9/12/2003(!). That’s probably right. I probably opened it, looked at it, and closed it. But I wouldn’t call it “frequent”.

Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect - English — 1.48 gigabytes

This is the one that I suspect is .NET 1.0. It says that I last used it on 7/23/2003, but I don’t think that’s right. I think I’ve used it since then.

**Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Professional 2003 - English **— 990 megabytes

This is the one that I suspect is .NET 1.1. It says that I last used it on 10/1/2003, but I’m fairly certain I’ve used it a couple times since then.

Also listed are

Microsoft .NET Framework (English) v1.0.3705 — 1.4 megabytes

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0 Hotfix (KB928367) — 990 megabytes

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 — 990 megabytes

**Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0 Hotfix (KB928366) **— 990 megabytes

I also have Microsoft SQL Server Installed, but I fear uninstalling it, in case it also uninstalls Enterprise Manager, which I use every day. I don’t use the SQL Engine itself. You get, like, 30 days or something, and then have to pay, like, a thousand bucks or something. So, I’ve never activated it.

(Yes, I know I could have written an Enterprise Manager equivalent, but it’s already there, and its associated tools, like Query Analyzer, are handy as hell.)

So… now that the information is out there, here’s what I’m getting at.

I either want to restart programming with .NET 1.1. It would be for XP desktop applications only, so I don’t need any fancy web stuff.

OR

I want to download Visual Studio 2008 Express and SQL Server 2008 Express, both of which I’m told are fully functioning. It’s just that VS lacks the crap they put in for team development (which usually works like shit anyway, and I work alone). And SQL has a top limit of 2 gig of data. Both of them are allegedly “free” from Microsoft.

I do believe I would be happy with both those limitations.

So here are the questions:

  1. Should I uninstall the two .NET version 1.0 things just because they’re pretty much dead weight? If so, what will happen if I run a program that needs that engine. Will it prompt me for a download or just crash?

  2. Since I have MDAC, I am perfectly happy with MS Access. But will .NET 1.1 connect to an MS Access database? Is there a legacy class for dealing with ADO? Or would I have to revert back to VB6 to use MS Access. (I have VB6, and am not ashamed to use it.)

  3. Is there any reason to trust Microsoft giving away its Visual Studio and MS SQL software for free? Obviously, it will take up a lot of space, but unless there are weird catches and gotchas, I won’t ever have more than 2 gig of data, and their demonstrations of 2008 are impressive indeed. (No mention of MS Access, though. But with SQL, I wouldn’t neet it.)

And finally…

  1. Is there any reason to keep around the earlier versions if I decide to get 2008? Or again, will programs using their engines crap out and die? If 2008 is really huge, I will need the space.

Any help? I’ve searched the computer questions thread, and there’s nothing about this there. Thank you.

2

I’m guessing uninstalling .NET 1.0 won’t free up 1 gig of space. It’s including files which it shares with .NET 1.1 which won’t get uninstalled.

Some legacy programs can only get compiled in 2003 but I doubt that’s going to be a problem for you. Visual Studio 2008 will install .NET 3.0 along with it which is quite a bit nicer than .NET 1.1

I would say uninstall 2003 and install 2008.

3

Yeah, correction:

Microsoft .NET Framework (English) v1.0.3705 — 1.4 GIGAbytes

4

So, you’re advising leave 1.0 but uninstall 1.1?

Do you happen to know if the Microsoft hype is legitimate? Or are their hidden activation fees and odd-ball costs?

Here’s their site, by the way:

5

I also have Microsoft SQL Server Installed, but I fear uninstalling it, in case it also uninstalls Enterprise Manager, which I use every day.

You can uninstall it and just install the client tools from the disc. That will install the EM without the server.

6

I can’t advise you on which versions of Visual Studio to have, but I can tell you not to start programming with the 1.0 or 1.1 frameworks. They are buggy as hell and lack a lot of features. 3.5 is the latest, and 2 is what most people are using. Start with at least 2.

Actually, re-reading your post (it’s way late/early here!) I can see that you are sort of confused as to the difference between Visual Studio and the ASP.NET runtime libraries. You don’t need VS.NET to run ASP.NET programs. You also probably won’t run into apps created in 2003 if you are looking around for free libraries and stuff. In fact you’re much more likely to run into things that require 2008 (I ran into one last week) and won’t even open with 2003.

Since you’re just learning, get VS 2008 Express and SQL 2008 Express and have at it. They will not interfere with VS 6, which I use too, but only for classic ASP.

And yes you can use Access with VS.NET…but why?

7

So I wouldn’t have to buy SQL.

ETA:

People are telling me that 2008 is not backward compatible. Apps written in 1.1, for example, won’t run on the latest greatest.

(Or do they just mean that old source code won’t open in the latest greatest Visual Studios?)

8

It’ll open, but take a little work to get it running. In my experience the changes you’ll have to make are largely superficial and projects aren’t too hard to convert once you do it once or twice. If you don’t have a lot of apps written within .NET 1.1, go ahead and install VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 and go about converting them over if you want to get rid of the previous .NET and VS installations.

9

I haven’t seen any trouble with incompatibilities between VS versions. I’ve upgraded twice, from VS 2003 to 2005, and then 2005 to 2008 in the past two years, and both times, all that happened was a conversion utility ran, but it only affected things like autogenerated code for the GUI and perhaps the .sln file.

We use Sql Server 2008 Express at work, it is very useful. It can even be used on a server as long as it doesn’t go over some fairly generous limits (1 gig of memory for the process, I believe).

I have Visual Studio 2008 Express at home as well, and it seems to work well.

You can also target earlier versions of .net to compile to in 2008, if that becomes neccesary.

I recommend installing VS 2008 Express and Sql Server 2008 Express, and leaving the old .net installations as they are. There are a lot of programs out there that use .NET 1.1, fewer with 1.0 but there may be some, so I would keep them in case you are using something that you don’t realize uses 1.0 or 1.1

Also many improvements have been made in C# (and I’m sure Visual Basic as well, but I don’t use that language), between 1.1 and 3.5, so it is worth the upgrade.

10

Just to be sure I understand correctly, you’d keep the frameworks and kill the studios. Right?

11

if you have earlier versions of visual studio, you can uninstall them if you want. I have uninstalled all my earlier VS versions here at work.

12

If I understand the online instructions correctly, SQL Server Express 2008 will not co-exist with any previous versions of SQL Server, including 2000. I got the original by download, not disk. I don’t think downloading EM separately is an option. Any suggestions?

13

Wait a minute! Something just dawned on me. I do have a fully installed and functional version of SQL 2000 on a remote server (which is the machine on which I do most of my work from home). Wouldn’t Visual Studio Express 2008 Visual Basic integrate with that old SQL database? I mean, if it will integrate with Access, c’mon. Right?

14

The Redistributables might have been installed by third-party apps, which is why they show as used fairly recently.

The various release versions of Visual Studio are [generally] interoperable with each other, but unless you are working in an environment that hasn’t migrated to the most recent, you should usually only use the most recent. (Of course, as ZipperJJ points out, if you’re developing with older technologies such as ASP, you may need to keep the versions of VS that work with them.)

The Management Studios will work with all versions of SQL Server, and newer versions of SQL Server are backwardly compatible with older applications. If you’re using the Express versions (especially now that there is an Express Edition of Management Studio), you don’t have to pay for anything. And, yes, newer Visual Studios will still work with SQL Server 2000, although you may well find that samples and example code rely on newer features.

Just FYI, the space usage figures in the installation database are not always very reliable. As a general guideline, they’re handy to know, but occasionally you will find an installer that has wildly inaccurate data. Windows does not snoop out the actual disk usage of applications in that applet.