Using Visual Studio 2005 (32bit) on a Windows 7 64bit machine

32bit-64bitvisual-studio-2005windows 7

I need to use Visual Studio 2005 (C++) on my new laptop – a Sony Vaio with Windows 7 64bit..

I don't need to develop for a 64bit environment, my work is all 32bit, so how can I be sure that I can still develop/debug/test for a 32bit target environment using VS2005 on a 64bit machine….?

What's the best option:

1) Just install VS2005 on Windows 7 64bit and carry on.. (suspect problems with 64bit runtime libs..?)

2) Dual boot the laptop with Windows XP 32bit.

3) Run some kind of Virtual Machine with Windows XP in it… (I don't have a VM yet, but would look into it)

Thanks

Best Answer

The answer is 1) you just need to make sure that you target processor is 32bit. You can develop for 32bit machine on a 64bit machine and vice versa.

After some looking around it looks like you must have up to date service packs. Read http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa948853.aspx if you want to know more.

Related Topic