Howto : .NET 1.1 Development on 9x and ME

[smartie77]

Normally on Win9x/ME you can not do any sort of .NET programming (C #, VB.NET ),because Microsofts Visual Studio .NEt 2003 and the .NET Framework Software development Tools are designed to install only on NT and Higher.

But what does install very well on 9x machines is the Redist package (Microsoft .NET Framework Version 1.1 Redistributable),which is needed to execute applications that were build on .NET languages.

1.) Needed in every case

The redist package does also install the compiler, and this makes it possible to actually build with the assemblies on 9x. It is freely available from MS. The requirements on the page will tell you that you need a N OS, this is not true. It installs ok on 98 and ME.

download Microsoft .NET Framework Version 1.1 Redistributable Package (Runtime) :

"dotnetfx.exe" 23.1 MB 4/3/2003

download :

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en

2.) optional SDK ( and totally unsupported by MS of course )

If your machine has a lot of place on the HD and you are going into serious programming, there is a way to extend the .NET environment onto Win9x/ME so that you get all the documentation also installed.

Installing .Net Framework SDK 1.1 in Windows 9x/ME

The Installer will tell you to upgrade to NT, 2000 or XP. If you’ve a Windows 98 machine that has at least 800 MB free disk space and 64MB RAM, you can install the SDK

Here is how. It compiles succesfully the "Hello World" as a C# program. .

Download .NET Framework SDK Version 1.1 (setup.exe) from MS :

"setup.exe" 106.2 MB 11/29/2006

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...41-a333c6b9181d

From Start menu, choose "Run" and give full_path_to_download\setup.exe /C.

This will prompt you to choose the folder to which you want to extract files. Specify a folder and wait till extraction is complete.

Go to the folder you specified.Run the MSI file in that folder.

If you can’t run it, that is because Microsoft Installer is not installed in your system. You can install it by running InstMSIW.exe.

Wait till the installer says it is finished. Towards the end of installation, it seems to just sleep for several minutes. Don’t cancel.

While the Installer is running it might throw thiss or similar error messages :

Error 1406. Could not write value SDK_Samples to key UNKNOWN\Features\6D1DB9BEBFD84C8429B701BB74AC953B. Verify that you habe sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel.

Abort -- Retry -- Ignore

Simply click "Ignore" and Setup will continue.

The registry keys in question are simply not present on Win9x but the Installer is expecting them on NT/2000/XP.

3.) Now get a Alternate to visual Studio to start writing code :

Because Visual Studio 2003/2005 wont install on Win9x, we only need a alternate IDE to make visual development possible :

#Develop ("SharpDevelop") is a free Replacement for Visual studio Net and they have three diffferent Versions, targeting the three different Framework families.

For our howto you want to download the #Develop Version 1.1.0.2124, 2/14/2006 which is Win9x ok

get it here http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/D...#SharpDevelop11 , but read the footnotes :

# In order to create the executable version of #develop, run the supplied debugbuild.bat in the src directory.

# In order to be able to either compile (source code) or run (executable) SharpDevelop, you must have the Microsoft .NET SDK 1.1 installed on that machine (the Runtime will also do, however, it comes without the SDK documentation).

So, after installing the .NET 1.1 redist and optionally the SDK with all the documentation for howto code, from topic start you can install #C Develop and set up your .NET Development Tools.

Note that the footnotes of #Develop says what MS wont tell you, that the redist package of NEt is more than only a "runtime". It just lacks documentation and extras whic is in the big SDK download.

A word on Net 2.0 :

Similar workaround must be possible with NEt 2,0 which installs also as redist package on 9x.

Problem alone is that there is no IDE I know of .. #Develop for Net 2.0 also wants 2000,XP just like VS2005 from MS.

[osRe]

Even assuming an IDE has v2.0-specific features, you can still code it manually or with less help using an older IDE (or even a plain text editor), no?

BTW, I think InstMSIW.exe is the NT variant?