Microsoft Visual Basic Express 2008 SP1 serial key or number

Microsoft Visual Studio Express is a set of integrated development environments (IDEs) developed by Microsoft as a freeware and registerware^[3] function-limited version of the non-free Microsoft Visual Studio. Express editions started with Visual Studio 2005.

Visual Studio Express was supplanted by the Visual Studio Community edition, which is also available for free,^[4] but with a different license. Compared to Visual Studio Express, the new license is more friendly to open-source but less for some closed source developers. The community edition works with plugins, a feature that was previously exclusive to the paid editions (Professional and higher). Express editions of Visual Studio 2015 are, however, still available for the time being.^[5] Microsoft's alternative is Visual Studio Community 2019.

History[edit]

Visual Studio 2005 Express, the first version of Visual Studio Express, was released on October 2005, with support until 2015. It runs on Windows 2000 SP4 and later. Service Pack 1 for 2005 Express was released on December 2006. Registration was not required; free-of-charge registration for use after a 30-day trial period has been required since the release of Visual Studio Express 2008.^[6] 2008-2012 products can be registered offline using registration keys. Since 2013 product, registration is done via online.

Visual Studio 2008 Express was released in November 2007, with its Service Pack 1 released on August 11, 2008. Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 Express require Windows XP SP3 or later. Although Windows 2000 is no longer supported, Visual Studio 2008 Express can develop applications to run on Windows 2000. Windows Phone support is available with Windows Vista and later.

Visual Studio 2010 Express was released in April 2010, alongside Visual Studio 2010.

2005–2010 products[edit]

Visual Studio 2005, 2008, and 2010 Express are geared toward single project types. For example, developers must launch Visual Web Developer Express to build web applications, while class libraries must be developed separately in Visual C# Express. The commercial editions of Visual Studio, however, support multiple project types without separate launch.

Visual Studio 2005, 2008, and 2010 Express consist of the following separate products:

Visual Basic Express[edit]

Visual Basic Express has the following limitations:^[7][8]

• No IDE support for databases other than SQL Server Express and Microsoft Access
• No support for web applications with ASP.NET (although, it is supported by Visual Web Developer Express)
• No support for developing for mobile devices (no templates or emulator)
• Absence of Crystal Reports
• Fewer project templates (e.g. Windows services template and Excel Workbook template are unavailable)
• Limited options for debugging and breakpoints
• No support for creating Windows Services (needs a separate project template)
• No support for OpenMP
• Limited deployment options for finished programs
• No code folding

Visual Basic 2008 Express includes the following improvements over 2005:

Visual Basic 2005 and Visual Basic 2008 Express feature a Visual Basic 6.0 converter that makes it possible to upgrade Visual Basic 6.0 projects to Visual Basic.NET. The converter is not included with 2010 Express.

Visual Web Developer Express[edit]

Visual Web Developer Express is a freeware web development tool^[9] that allows developers to evaluate the web development and editing capabilities of the other Visual Studio editions at no charge. Its main function is to create ASP.NET websites. It has a WYSIWYG interface, drag-and-drop user interface designer, enhanced HTML and code editors, a limited database explorer, support for CSS, JavaScript and XML, and integrated, design-time validation for standards including XHTML 1.0/1.1 and CSS 2.1.

Visual Web Developer 2005 Express lacks certain features, such as the Accessibility Checker, the ability to create standalone class library projects, third-party add-ins and macros.^[10] Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1 supports both class library and web application projects.^[11] It also includes a new integrated HTML designer based on Microsoft Expression Web. However, this edition cannot publish self-developed websites.^{[clarification needed]}

Visual C++ Express[edit]

Visual C++ Express compiles .NET and Win32 applications in 32-bit only.^[12][13] It includes Windows SDK's compilers and core files, which developers can use to build Win32 applications.

Limitations of Visual C++ Express:

• No support for MFC or ATL. These libraries can, however, be installed from an older version of the Windows SDK and Windows Driver Kit.^[14]
• Lack of a resource editor, which is available in commercial editions of Visual Studio.^[15]
• No profiling support
• No support for add-ins or IDE macros
• No option for crash dump generation
• No "list of all breakpoints" window.
• No support for cross-language debugging, for example a C# application calling a C++ DLL.

Limitations in earlier versions:

• No out-of-box support for developing 64-bit applications (prior to 2012).
• No support for OpenMP (prior to 2012)
• The debugger cannot be attached to a running process (prior to 2010)

While Microsoft lists memory windows as unavailable in Visual Studio 2010 Express,^[16] third parties have reported that they are available when Expert Settings are enabled.^[17][18]

Many open source projects have started providing project files created with Visual C++ Express; noteworthy examples include the Ogre and Irrlicht engines. Modding kits for commercial engines, such as Valve's Source engine, also support this development system.^[19]

Visual C# Express[edit]

Visual C# Express is a free, lightweight, integrated development environment (IDE) designed for novice developers, students and hobbyists to create applications and (when combined with the XNA Game Studio) video games for Windows, Xbox 360 and Zune. It can build console, Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation applications, and class libraries.

Microsoft has found that a substantial community of game players are taking up C# programming.^[20][21][22]

Limitations[edit]

Visual C# Express does not have a breakpoint control panel; breakpoints can only be toggled.

The following refactoring modes were also unavailable:^[23]

• Encapsulate field
• Promote local to parameter
• Reorder parameters
• Remove parameters
• Extract interface

The limitations effectively reduce the refactoring capabilities of Visual C# Express to renaming and extracting methods. According to Microsoft, the reason the listed features are absent is "to simplify the C# Express user experience". Some users remarked that the omission of refactoring capabilities removed useful functionality without actually simplifying use.^[24]

The ability to attach the debugger to an already-running process is also unavailable, hindering scenarios such as writing Windows services and re-attaching a debugger under ASP.NET when errors under the original debugging session cause breakpoints to be ignored.

2012–2013 products[edit]

For the 2012 release of Visual Express, Microsoft changed its distribution of editions so that each version is geared toward an overall solution type, and can contain more than one project type. (This is unlike previous Express editions, each of which was geared around a single programming language.) For example, a web solution might consist of a web application project and a couple of C# class-library projects. This change was made to reflect the wide diversity of applications available for the web and the new WinRT platform used on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.

Microsoft has released five Visual Studio Express 2012 products:

In October 2013, Microsoft released four new versions of its Visual Studio Express products. Like the 2012 Express edition, they are geared toward an overall solution type which may mix different types of projects. However, different IDEs are still offered for different destination platforms. They are:^[33][34]

Note that Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone was not released in the set of 2013 products, but Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone is now merged with Visual Studio Express for Windows 2013.2.^[36] With this new release, Windows 8.1 x86 is now supported for Windows Phone 8.1 development, but not for Windows Phone 8.0 development or the Windows Phone Emulator, the latter of which also requires a processor that supports Client Hyper-V and Second Level Address Translation (SLAT).

2015–2017 products[edit]

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it.(August 2016)

The Visual Studio Express 2015 editions are:

• Express for Desktop – for creating desktop Windows programs^[37]
• Express for Web - for creating responsive websites, web APIs, or "real-time online experiences"^[37]
• Express for Windows – core tools for creating Universal Windows Platform apps. Requires Windows 10.^[37]
• Team Foundation Server 2015 Express – platform for source code control, for project management, and for team collaboration^[37]

On their Overview of Visual Studio 2015 Products page, Microsoft says:

Small teams and individual developers should consider Visual Studio Community 2015 which is more comprehensive than Express.^[38]

The Visual Studio Express 2017 editions are:

• Express for Desktop - Supports building managed and native desktop applications.*

* Visual Studio Express 2017 is available for Windows Desktop developers. This will be the final version of Visual Studio Express, and there will not be a UWP or Web offering of Visual Studio Express 2017. We encourage all users to look at the free development options offered by Microsoft such as Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio Community for future development needs.^[39]

Extensibility[edit]

Visual Studio is extensible by nature, ultimately consisting of a core "shell" that implements all commands, windows, editors, project types, languages, and other features through dynamically loadable modules called "packages".^[40][41] Microsoft encourages and fosters third-party partners to create modules for Visual Studio via the free VSIP program.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

MKS Toolkit 9.3

MKS Toolkit is the leader in UNIX to Window scripting, connectivity, and application migration. Enhancements found in the 9.3 release include product activation, support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, updated operating system compatibility, and much more.

The Fixed Problems section discusses the problems resolved in this release. The following sections discuss the specific enhancements in much greater detail.

Simplified Installation and Product Activation

MKS Toolkit 9.3 now features Product Activation. Unlike previous versions of MKS Toolkit which might have required all three of a serial number, a complex access key, and a web-provided PIN to install, Product Activation allows you to install MKS Toolkit 9.3 with only a single Product Key similar to those keys used by other industry standard programs.

In addition, Product Activation, combined with the new MKS Product Activation Account, provides you with better control of your MKS Toolkit licenses. Product Activation is controlled through the Activation tab of the MKS Toolkit control panel applet.

For more information, see Activating MKS Toolkit below.

Full Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Compatibility

MKS Toolkit 9.3 is now fully compatible with Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta Support

MKS Toolkit 9.3 is compatible with the beta versions of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Express (also known as Visual C++ 10.0 Express). Details on using previous versions of the Visual Studio or Visual C++ Express IDE to compile, link, and debug applications can be found in the "The Porting Process" and "Using the Visual C++ IDE" chapters of the online version of the MKS Toolkit UNIX to Windows Porting Guide.

Support for the final release versions of Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Express will be included in a patch of MKS Toolkit 9.3.

Kerberos Authentication Support for Connectivity Suite

MKS Toolkit 9.3 now supports Kerberos authentication for the secure shell and / components of the MKS Toolkit Connectivity Suite.

Details can be found in the new "Using Kerberos with MKS Toolkit" appendix of the MKS Toolkit Connectivity Solutions Guide.

New POSIX pax Archive Format

The utility can now read and write archives using the POSIX-defined archive format. This new format allows the inclusion of additional character sets, longer user, group and path names, and other additional information that cannot normally be included in archives using other formats (for example, , , , and )

To support this new format, the utility now accepts the option to specify the use of this new format and uses keywordvalue options to specify extended header information.

Improved smtpmail Utility

A variety of improvements have been made to the utility:

• Attachment Support. The new option lets you include attachments with your mail messages.
  
  
• Improved Address Specification. The utility now lets you add "carbon copy" (cc) and "blind carbon copy" (bcc) addresses to your mail messages.
  
  
• HTML Support. MKS Toolkit 9.3 adds the ability for the utility to send HTML-formatted mail messages.
  
  

UTF8 Support in NuTCRACKER Platform

MKS Toolkit 9.3 adds support for UTF8 character sets and locales to the NuTCRACKER Platform.

Updated openssh/openssl in NuTCRACKER Platform

The MKS Toolkit 9.3 version of the NuTCRACKER Platform now features updated versions of the openssh and openssl libraries.

Updated X11 Runtime Libraries

The core X11 runtime libraries, provided with MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers and MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-bit Edition, have been updated to X11R7.4.

New Features in Previous Releases

Hardware and Software Requirements

MKS Toolkit products do not have any particular hardware requirements. Any machine that is sufficient to run the underlying operating system is sufficient. All MKS Toolkit products run on Windows systems with Intel 32-bit, Itanium (IA64), or Extended Architecture 64-bit (x64) processors.

MKS Toolkit products have the following software requirements:

• Platforms. You can install all MKS Toolkit products on:
  • Windows 2000
    
  • Windows XP
    
  • Windows Server 2003
    
  • Windows Server 2003 R2
    
  • Windows Vista
    
  • Windows XP x64 Edition
    
  • Windows Server 2003 for Itanium-based Systems
    
  • Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition
    
  • Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 Edition
    
  • Windows Vista x64
    
  • Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and x64)
    
  • Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems
    
  • Windows 7
    
  • Windows 7 x64
    
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 (32-bit and x64)
    
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-based Systems
    
  
  
• FAT File Systems. It is not currently possible to adequately secure an MKS Toolkit installation on a FAT file system. Therefore, on Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/7 systems, we recommend installing MKS Toolkit on an NTFS file system.
  
  
• Compilers. The MKS Toolkit development products work with various compilers and compilation environments. The "Using Languages" chapter of the MKS Toolkit UNIX to Windows Porting Guide describes how to use these MKS Toolkit products with C, C++, and Fortran.
  
  MKS Toolkit for Developers supports the following x86 compilers:
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, 7.0, 7.1, 8.0, or 9.0 (as a separate product or as part of Microsoft Visual Studio or the Windows SDK)
  • Windows SDK
  • Visual C++ 2008 Express (also known as Visual C++ 9.0 Express)
  • Visual C++ 2005 Express (requires Microsoft Platform SDK or Windows SDK)
  • Microsoft C++ 2003 Toolkit (requires Microsoft Platform SDK or Windows SDK)
  • Intel C++ 8.x or 9.x (requires Microsoft Platform SDK or Windows SDK)
  • GCC 3.3.1, as provided in the MKS Toolkit Resource Kit
  
  In addition, MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers and MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers also support the following compilation environments:
  • both versions of the Standard Template Library
  • the Absoft Pro Fortran f90/f77 compiler, versions 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0, and 10.0. (http://www.absoft.com/)
  
  MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-bit Edition supports the following additional 64-bit compilers:
  • Visual C++ from Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (Note: Team edition or Windows SDK is required for IA64 compiler)
  • Visual C++ from Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (Note: Team edition or Windows SDK is required for IA64 compiler)
  • Microsoft Platform SDK or Windows SDK Compiler
  • Intel C++ 8.x or 9.x (requires Microsoft Platform SDK or Windows SDK)
  
  Note: As of Windows Vista, the Microsoft Platform SDK was renamed to the Windows SDK. References to Microsoft Platform SDK also
  
  For those 64-bit compilers that require the Microsoft Platform SDK or Windows SDK (that is, the Intel C++ 8.x or 9.x compilers), the version of the SDK required depends upon your system's processor. For those processors with IA64 architecture, you can use any version of the SDK from February 2003 or later, such as the one available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/. For Extended Architecture processors, you must use Build 1289 or later of the SDK.
  
  

  When installing MKS Toolkit, you are asked to specify the default compiler to be used with the development utilities provided. Should you decide to change your default compiler from your original choice, you should do the following:

  1. Close all MKS Toolkit shells and utilities.

  2. Select Add or Remove Programs from the Windows control panel applet.

  3. Select MKS Toolkit from the list of programs and click the Change button. The MKS Toolkit installer begins.

  4. When the Program Maintenance dialog appears, check the Modify option and click the Next > button.

  5. As the installer continues with the process of modifying your MKS Toolkit configuration, you are given the opportunity to select a new default compiler as well as to change other installer options.

• Deployment. When deploying NuTCRACKER Platform applications built with Visual Studio 2005, Windows Installer 3.1 (or higher) must be installed on each target machine to ensure that all parts of the NuTCRACKER Platform are installed correctly.
  
  
• Windows Task Scheduler. The MKS Toolkit Scheduler, the command-line scheduling utilities (, , , and ) require Internet Explorer 4 (or later) and the Windows Task Scheduler. On most Windows operating systems, these are already installed.
  
  Alternatively, you can download Internet Explorer and its add-ons from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie.
  
  

Installing MKS Toolkit

If you have MKS Toolkit 7.5 or earlier, or if you have a previous version of MKS NuTCRACKER Professional, we recommend that you uninstall it, or install MKS Toolkit 9.3 on another machine.

When installing on a machine with SCO XVision Eclipse installed, you should uninstall it before installing MKS Toolkit 9.3.

Note: If you have MKS Toolkit for Interoperability or MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers installed on a Japanese machine and uninstall XVision Eclipse, MKS X/Server is not installed with a standard English license for these products. Contact Customer Support to request the proper license.

When installing MKS Toolkit on a 64-bit machine, you must first uninstall any previously installed MKS Toolkit releases (version 8.6 and earlier).

When installing MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-bit Edition on any platform, you must first uninstall any existing MKS Toolkit installation.

When installing MKS Toolkit, you must install from an account with local or domain administrator privileges. You do not need to be an Administrator, but your login ID must be a member of the local or domain Windows Administrators group before you can install.

All MKS Toolkit products share a common installer. If you are installing from a CD, insert the MKS Toolkit distribution CD; the installer should start automatically. If you are installing from an electronic distribution, run the self-extracting installer.

To install MKS Toolkit, click the Install Toolkit button and follow the instructions on the dialogs that appear.

Note: You should turn off all virus protection software before installing MKS Toolkit. Such software can sometimes cause the installation to be interrupted and rolled back. Once you have installed MKS Toolkit, you can turn virus protection back on.

For step-by-step installation instructions and an installation FAQ, see http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/install.asp.

Silent and Administrative Installations

For step-by-step installation instructions and information on administrative and silent installations for MKS Toolkit see http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/install.asp.

Additional Components on the MKS Toolkit CD

The MKS Toolkit CD also includes several items that are not installed as part of the normal installation procedure. These are:

• The directory. This directory contains a collection of sample source code for use with MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers and MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers. Though they can be modified and compiled for 64-bit Windows systems, these samples were designed and tested on 32-bit Windows platforms using the MKS Toolkit porting and migration products.
  
  These samples include binaries for , , , , and the suite of utilities.
  
  
• The directory. This directory contains a collection of utilities and drivers that may be needed to get full use out of MKS products. This includes the recent versions of the Jet Database driver, Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC), Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and Adobe® Acrobat® Reader.
  

Uninstalling MKS Toolkit

Uninstalling MKS Toolkit 8.x or 9.x

To uninstall MKS Toolkit, use the following procedure:

1. From the Control Panel run Add/Remove Programs.
   
   
2. Remove MKS Toolkit 8.x or MKS Toolkit 9.x, as appropriate.
   
   
3. Remove SCO XVision Eclipse (or MKS X/Server). (This is only necessary if one of the two X Server packages was installed. This X Server is normally only installed with MKS Toolkit for Interoperability, MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers, and MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-bit Edition.)
   

You must reboot your system before reinstalling MKS Toolkit.

Uninstalling Previous Versions of MKS Toolkit

To uninstall a 7.x version of MKS Toolkit, run the utility found in your system directory (you can find your system directory with the command).

Alternatively, you can uninstall the components manually with the following procedure:

1. From the Control Panel, run Add/Remove Programs.
   
   
2. Remove, in order, each of the following (if present):
   MKS Evaluation Guide
   MKS Toolkit 7.x
   MKS Platform Components 7.x

You must reboot your system before reinstalling MKS Toolkit.

Activating MKS Toolkit

MKS Toolkit version 9.3 is copy protected and requires activation against the MKS Activation Server (located at http://www.mkssoftware.com) to operate. The software is node fixed (that is, it is attached to a single computer system) and user counted (the Named Authenticated Users must be specified and are enforced). This activation takes place after installation, so you need to plan your product rollout so you do not find yourself with unactivated software on users' machines.

• If your site has many different serial numbers and, in the past, have used only one of them on many machines, you will either need to contact MKS Sales to have these serial numbers bundled under one serial number or use each of these serial numbers as they were purchased (that is, install a single license on no more than one machine; install a five user license installed on no more than five machines with one user each, and so forth).

• If you have used a single serial number to download the new version of MKS Toolkit during the update process and rolled out to many machines, you will need to specify all serial numbers that need to be updated as each serial number has a notion of the version number requested and will not activate unless it has been updated.

• If you have some serial numbers under a valid PCS contract and some that are not, and they have not been retired, you will be unable to update any of your serial numbers until you bring all licenses in use under a valid PCS, or retire unused licenses permanently, or submit to MKS Personnel in writing, you will not update said serial numbers to any later version, unless you purchase an update license at a later date.

Further information about MKS Toolkit 9.3 activation and the information which is sent to and stored on MKS computers can be found here: http://www.mkssoftware.com/docs/activation.

You can view the MKS Product Activation FAQ at http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/kb/activation.

For questions related to sales issues, please e-mail: tk_sales@mks.com.

For questions related to support issues, please email: tk_support@mks.com.

We at MKS sincerely value and appreciate your business and want to do everything we can to ensure a successful implementation of our MKS products.

Known Issues

The following known issues exist in MKS Toolkit 9.3:

• NuTCRACKER Platform Applications and MKS X/Server. Currently, there are some issues with NuTCRACKER Platform applications which use OpenGL to access MKS X/Server features such as Direct Rendering and Overlay Planes on systems using an NVIDIA video card. For details, see the MKS X/Server 8.5 Patch 1 release notes.
  
  
• Short Path Names with Visual Studio 2008. The Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 IDE sometimes crashes when building a Win32 console application with the Additional Library Directories value set to a short path (for example, ). We recommend always using long path names ( in this situation. Microsoft is aware of this issue and has it registered as C++ case number SRX071206601300. A fix is expected in Visual Studio 2008 Patch 1 from Microsoft, scheduled for April or May 2008.
  
  
• Installing MKS X/Server. When installing MKS Toolkit for Interoperability or MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers, you may receive a message asking you to uninstall XVision and reboot before you install MKS X/Server. You can install MKS X/Server from the CD autoplay screen. It cannot be installed by performing a Modify or Repair operation on MKS Toolkit.
  
  
• MIT Kerberos for Windows 3.0.0. When MIT Kerberos for Windows 3.0.0 is installed on a system, it appears to break SSPI, causing credential passing errors. We recommend uninstalling this software on systems running MKS Toolkit and rebooting.
  
  
• Security ID Warning. When the TK_NTSECURITYINFO_OFF environment variable is set, it turns off all security related features. This includes the ability to look up user and group IDs. As a result, utilities such as , , and that depend upon user and group IDs will not work properly when this variable is set.
  
  
• _NutConf(). MKS Toolkit 8.6 added large file support and as a result inadvertently broke backward binary compatibility for applications linked against previous import libraries. With 8.6p2 and 8.7 we added an environment variable to supplement the to revert the behavior of the runtime to pre-8.6 form such that read beyond a 2G boundary without large file support enabled will not result in an error. to do the equivalent of without the need to recompile or relink your application.
  
  
• Path Name Issue. If you install the Microsoft Platform SDK or Windows SDK on a 64-bit machine, and your PATH environment variable contains elements that begin with , the script for setting up the 64-bit build environment included with that SDK does not work. There are two possible solutions:
  
  
  • Modify the PATH environment variable in the system environment to substitute the short path variant of the folder name . The short path variant is normally . You can use from a command window to be sure.
    
    
  • Modify the file in the root directory of the SDK tree. Find the section that looks like this: REM --------------------------------------------- REM Patch path to put Bin\WinNT\NT4 in path ahead REM of NT5 tools that don't run on NT4 REM --------------------------------------------- For /F "delims=;" %%i IN ('Cmd /c Ver') DO ( IF "%%i"=="Windows NT Version 4.0" ( Set Path=%MSSdk%\Bin\WinNT\NT4;%Path% Goto Finish ) ) Goto Finish and remove or comment out the line that begins .
  
  
• The uil Compiler. The compiler used with some Motif applications can generate uid files that are compatible with either 32 or 64-bit platforms. A single uid file cannot be used for both situations. This is consistent with the documented behavior of the compiler. The compiler normally will try to figure out whether to build the 32-bit or 64-bit version based on your build environment. If the TARGET_CPU environment variable is set to either "AMD64" or "IA64", the compiler builds a 64-bit compatible uid file; otherwise, it builds a 32-bit compatible uid file. The TARGET_CPU environment variable is set as appropriate for all 64-bit NuTCRACKER build environments launched from the Start menu.
  
  The uid file that is generated by the compiler in this release is not guaranteed to be portable to other 64-bit UNIX platforms.
  
  

Customer Support

When reporting a problem, you will need certain information about your product, which you can find on the Support Information tab of the MKS Toolkit Control Panel Applet.

Contact MKS customer support at:

Additional MKS Toolkit Resources

There are several other sources for additional information about our MKS Toolkit products.

We have general product information, including technical specifications, detailed utility listings, and datasheets at:

We offer a resource kit including example scripts, additional utilities, more tutorials, and a wide variety of other useful information at:

We have several additional articles, tutorials, and white papers about using features of the MKS Toolkit at:

Through the years, we have accumulated a lot of technical details about the MKS Toolkit products and have put this information in a searchable database at:

Our customers commonly ask certain questions. These questions and their answers are in our Frequently Asked Questions pages at:

Known installation issues are listed at:

Fixed Problems

Several problems were fixed in MKS Toolkit 9.3. These are listed at:

Fixed Problems in Previous Releases

Heath

The Visual Studio 2008 RTM and SP1 detection keys are largely the same as the Visual Studio 2005 SP1 detection keys, and are documented below. But there is a caveat for released and upcoming versions: the shared detection value can be overwritten by an older installation of the same release.

For example, if you installed VS2008 Professional, then installed VS2008 SP1, and after that installed Team Foundation Client (TFC) 2008 RTM, the shared detection value is reset to 0 instead of 1. To be sure SP1 is installed, you need to detect SP1 on specific editions of Visual Studio 2008 or any other of our 2008 product releases including .NET 3.5 RTM and SP1.

Product family detection value

Product families define a group of products with similar functionality. The “VS” product family, for example, includes many editions but defines all full SKUs of the Visual Studio IDE. To find the service pack level of a product family, search for the following registry value.

Key:
Value (REG_DWORD):

The exception is for product families “NetFX” and “WPF” that use version 3.5 instead of 9.0.

If the registry value is 0, the RTM version of the product family is installed. If the value is 1, then SP1 is installed on the product family.

Keep in mind, however, that this value is shared by all editions within a product family. If an older product edition is installed after a newer product edition within the same product family, the value will be overwritten. To detect whether SP1 is installed you need to check individual product editions.

Product families released for the 2008 wave of products include,

• NetFX, WPF: .NET Framework 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 including Windows Presentation Framework
• RDBG: Visual Studio 2008 Remote Debugger
• TRIN: Visual Studio Tools for the Office System 3.0 Runtime
• VB: Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition
• VC: Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition
• VCS: Visual C# 2008 Express Edition
• VNS: Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition
• VS: Visual Studio 2008 Professional, Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite, etc.
• VSTF: Visual Studio 2008 Team Explorer, Visual Studio 2008 Team Test Load Agent, etc.

Product edition detection value

A product family may install one or more editions. The “VS” product family, for example, contains several editions including “PRO” (Professional”), “VSTS” (Team Suite), and more. To find the service pack level of a product edition, search for the following registry value:

Key:
Value (REG_DWORD):

The exceptions are for product families “NetFX” and “WPF” that use version 3.5 instead of 9.0, and do not specify a ProductEdition. For .NET itself, the language is always 1033 unless you’re detecting the SP level for a language pack that uses the LCID for a specific culture.

So for .NET, you would check the following registry value:

Key:
Value (REG_DWORD):

For either Visual Studio or .NET, if the registry value is 0, the RTM versions of the product family are installed. If the value is 1, then SP1 is installed on the product family.

The ProductLanguage is the LCID of the product installed, such as 1033 for English (US).

The following table contains the list of released product families, editions, and the product names.

Detection in Windows Installer XML

WiX v3 contains a number of properties to detect the SP level. Aaron Stebner has provided a good post that describes how.