VISUAL STUDIO 2005 future support in future Windows 11 versions

Question

VISUAL STUDIO 2005 future support in future Windows 11 versions

CASSIGNOL Christophe 20

Hello

This is more a question rather than an issue on Visual Studio 2005, and I don't actually know where to ask the question.

We have some applications developped with Visual Studio 2005 in 32bits and we would like to know how long will they still be running on Windows future version ?

We are still working with these applications and install them on Windows 10 LTSC up to now without issues, but we will soon need to install it on future versions of Windows. Will there still be working on next version of Windows (11... 12... etc) ?

Thank you for your reply.

Christophe

David Lowndes 2,640 Reputation points MVP

2023-11-10T17:33:19.34+00:00

If your applications are well behaved - no use of undocumented facilities, no bugs where things work by chance, no susceptibility to security issues, or protocols that may be dropped, then they're likely to continue working on all future versions of Windows that MS ensures are backward compatible. Having said that, I'd strongly recommend you consider maintaining your programs - build them for 64-bit and with a newer version of VS.
RLWA32 49,651 Reputation points

2023-11-10T18:04:18.62+00:00

The longer you wait to migrate your 32-bit application from VS2005 to 64-bits using a currently supported version of Visual Studio the more painful it will be when you ultimately have to make the move.
Stephen Wolstenholme 0 Reputation points

2024-04-04T13:07:53.94+00:00

I developed 3 applications with VS2005. They would not build with VS2022 so I bought a USB disc for my new PC and installed VS2005 again. It would be better if VS2022 would work with source files created 15 years ago but it won't. Fortunately all the applications are bug free.

Steve

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David Lowndes 2,640 Reputation points MVP

2023-11-10T17:33:19.34+00:00

If your applications are well behaved - no use of undocumented facilities, no bugs where things work by chance, no susceptibility to security issues, or protocols that may be dropped, then they're likely to continue working on all future versions of Windows that MS ensures are backward compatible. Having said that, I'd strongly recommend you consider maintaining your programs - build them for 64-bit and with a newer version of VS.
RLWA32 49,651 Reputation points

2023-11-10T18:04:18.62+00:00

The longer you wait to migrate your 32-bit application from VS2005 to 64-bits using a currently supported version of Visual Studio the more painful it will be when you ultimately have to make the move.
Stephen Wolstenholme 0 Reputation points

2024-04-04T13:07:53.94+00:00

I developed 3 applications with VS2005. They would not build with VS2022 so I bought a USB disc for my new PC and installed VS2005 again. It would be better if VS2022 would work with source files created 15 years ago but it won't. Fortunately all the applications are bug free.

Steve

Answer 1

Hi @CASSIGNOL Christophe ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A!

According to Microsoft’s application compatibility promise, it is allowed to install the VS2005 on Windows 11 or the future version of Windows.

But it is noted that the support has ended for all Visual Studio 2005 editions. We can't guarantee that you won't run into problems later. You can view the product lifecycle of Visual Studio 2005.

We recommend you migrate your applications to a newer version of Visual Studio.

Sincerely,

Anna

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Answer 2

Bruce (SqlWork.com) 78,236 Volunteer Moderator

Vs 2005 is out of support. It most likely will run on future versions of windows, but there is no guarantee. Any security patch may break it.

but you should be able to run in a Vm running an old windows version.

a bigger issue is if the apps you build with vs 2005 stop working on future versions of windows. You may have few options.

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VISUAL STUDIO 2005 future support in future Windows 11 versions

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