Installing WSS 3.0 Visual Studio 2005 Extension

Posted on August 14, 2008
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I put together an intranet project at work using WSS 2.0 more than a year ago. Now I am looking at upgrading the intranet to WSS 3.0 and I want to create a few customized web parts. You can create WSS web parts using Visual Studio but you have to install WSS 3.0 Visual Studio 2005 Extension first.

Since I am using a Windows XP desktop for development, I tried to install the extension on my development machine. It did not allow me to proceed with the installation because you must first install WSS 3.0. Fair enough but WSS 3.0 can only be installed on a Windows 2003 Server with SP1. I don’t want to install Visual Studio 2005 and the WSS 3.0 Visual Studio 2005 Extension on my server because you don’t do development on a production server. I search around for a solution and came across a registry hack that will trick the installation program to recognize a valid copy of WSS on your development machine and let you proceed with the installation. Yes, just get on with it!!!

Hack Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2005 Extensions (VSeWSS) on Vista

Of course there is a more legitimate method of doing this. That is to install WSS 3.0 on a Windows 2003 Server. Then copy the Sharepoint.dll to your development machine, set up the dll and then install WSS 3.0 Visual Studio 2005 Extension.

Whichever method you choose, it’s all a matter of personal preference. I went with the registry hack.