Is there a way to silently install visual studio 97 (5.x) and its MSDN as a chained setup?

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I am aware that Microsoft Visual Studio 97 (i.e., Version 5.x) uses the Microsoft ACME Setup engine, and, to that effect, I am sure there must be a way to do an unattended (silent), chained install of all the VS tools, and the MSDN and Service Pack 3.

Reason why I am asking is, I have a large legacy code base, and I need Visual Studio 97 around in order to maintain these projects (to open their .dsw and .dsp files).

Any help would be appreciated. I want to install the following, one after the other, silently, with a batch file, without having to invoke the "Master Setup" and click through all the screens:

- VB 5.0
- Visual FoxPro 5.0
- Visual J++ 1.1
- Visual C++ 5.0
- Music Producer 1.0
- Visual InterDev Client 1.0
- MSDN
- SP3

Thanks,
Brian

What I have tried:

I have tried running ACMSETUP.EXE /k <cdkey> as the directions hint at you can do for Visual Studio 6.0, but to no avail. It does not seem like there is such an option.

Posted 21-Jul-16 11:02am

Brian C Hart86.6K

Updated 21-Jul-16 11:24am

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Dave Kreskowiak · Answer 1 · 2016-07-21T11:24:00

You can't seriously be asking people to remember how a 20 year old installer worked do you?

From what I can barely remember, it's not possible to chain the installations together as VS97, FoxPro, C++ and SP3 all have mandatory reboots at the end of them and you can't install anything else until the machine is restarted after each install.

As for an unattended install of VS, there was a bunch of flaming hoops you have to jump through to get it to work. Something about running a tool to create a response file and then a complicated command line, that didn't start with ACMSetup, where the response file had to be included along with the product key. I really can't remember the specifics.

It would be far better to just create an XP virtual machine and install everything by hand on that and just keep the virtual machine around. Once you have that machine built, it's easy to roll it back to a known state if something goes wrong.

BFeely0 · Answer 2 · 2021-03-06T05:54:00

Solution 2

When you say flaming hoops, I am jumping through some BIG flaming hoops to install VS97 on my Active Directory domain. My solution for unattended install is to run an AutoHotkey script to automate the UI. On the plus side, Visual Studio 6.0 supports unattended install.

Posted 6-Mar-21 5:54am

BFeely0

Updated 6-Mar-21 5:56am