Can I run two versions of Visual Studio at the same time

Question

I have windows 11
I have vs 2013 that I use to develop my family website. It is fine but I cannot debug javascript etc. using Edge browser or add packages (fine in itself but well)
I have noticed that for retired/academics etc. there is a free download of the latest Visual Studio.
What I want to do is run these side-by-side on the one machine.
I want to get to the point that both publish to inetpub\wwwroot\WebSite1 and inetpub\wwwroot\WebSite2.
Once that happens I am happy to uninstall vs 2013 ...
I use Sql Server 2012 too.

Answer 1

Hi @Darren Webb,

Thanks for sharing your details!

---

Can I run two versions of Visual Studio at the same time?

Yes. Running multiple versions of Visual Studio side-by-side is fully supported and very common. Installing a newer Visual Studio on Windows 11 while keeping VS2013 temporarily is a safe approach and won’t, by itself, break IIS or your existing site. Microsoft explicitly supports installing Visual Studio when earlier or later versions are already present.

• Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/install-visual-studio-versions-side-by-side?view=visualstudio

---

From what you’ve described, the part to watch isn’t really Visual Studio but it’s the IIS/ASP.NET behavior on the newer machine.

The fact you needed to run:

appcmd unlock config -section:handlers

often happens when the application’s web.config tries to modify handler mappings and IIS initially blocks it. This is fairly common when moving older ASP.NET apps to a newer OS, but it does mean the IIS configuration on the Windows 11 machine is no longer completely default. Installing a newer Visual Studio won’t change that IIS behavior.

---

Your plan to publish to separate folders (for example, inetpub\wwwroot\WebSite1 and WebSite2) is a low-risk way to proceed. I would keep VS2013 for now, install the latest Visual Studio side-by-side, open a copy of the solution in the newer VS, and publish to the second site. Once everything works end-to-end, you can safely remove VS2013.

One small caution: if the newer Visual Studio upgrades the project, it may not open cleanly in VS2013 afterward so keeping a backup while testing is wise.

---

If you run into a specific IIS or publish error, share the exact message and it will be much easier to pinpoint the cause.

Hope this helps! If my answer was helpful - kindly follow the instructions here so others with the same problem can benefit as well. 

Answer 2

You can definitely run multiple versions of Visual Studio side-by-side; it’s a very common setup and shouldn't cause any conflicts. Regarding your deployment question, that is simply a configuration setting—you can point the deployment process to any folder on your system.

As for the "appcmd unlock config" command, it’s hard to diagnose why that’s necessary without more context. If you’re seeing a web.config error, it could be due to config inheritance (multiple files within a parent app) or a permissions issue with the IIS application pool.

Could you share the specific error message you’re seeing and the steps you’ve taken so far? That will help us narrow it down.

Answer 3

Yes, you can run two versions of Visual Studio side-by-side on the same machine. Each installation of Visual Studio must have a unique combination of major version, edition, and update channel. For example, you can have Visual Studio 2013 installed alongside a more recent version, such as Visual Studio 2022, without any issues. This allows you to continue using your existing Visual Studio 2013 for your family website while also utilizing the latest features and capabilities of a newer version.

When you install a new version, you can specify different installation paths to ensure they do not conflict with each other. Once you have both versions installed, you can configure them to publish to different directories as you mentioned (inetpub\wwwroot\WebSite1 and inetpub\wwwroot\WebSite2). After you are comfortable with the newer version and have migrated your projects, you can then uninstall Visual Studio 2013 if you choose to do so.