Will installing Visual Studio 2010 side by side with VS2008 cause problems?

What kind of problems might this cause?

Is it better to install in a VM?

It is always possible that side-by-side installation issues exist, and you should have the appropriate safeguards in place (e.g. backup, use a VM, etc.).

In my personal experience, it has worked just fine. For my Tech Ed presentation, I rebuilt my laptop with Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010 all installed side-by-side on Windows 7 x64. I didn't experience any problems.

The VS team has chimed in on this issue here. From the post:

"Q: Is it ‘safe’ to install VS 2010 Beta1 on my machine?

A: Yes! We’ve tested side-by-side scenarios, so installing the beta on a machine with VS 2008 installed is fine. The beta also supports uninstall and should leave VS 2008 and your machine in working order afterward. You can install VS 2010 Beta1 on a VPC if you prefer, though you will notice slower performance than if you run VS on your local machine. And please remember that however you install, this is pre-release software. The VS 2010 Beta1 readme documents major known issues, but it’s not guaranteed to be an exhaustive list."

On my machine I have installed:

• Visual Studio 2003
• Visual Studio 2005
• Visual Studio 2008
• Visual Studio 2010

and it works like a charm

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It's unlikely to cause problems as VS 2010 is primarily designed for developing with the .NET 4.0 framework (although multi-targeting is implemented, like it was in VS 2008, just in a better manner).

I (and no one I work with) ever had a problem with VS 2005 & VS 2008 installed side-by-side. In fact, it was strongly encouraged as we had legacy projects which were built in VS 2005 and although the upgrade to VS 2008 was minor (if staying with the .NET 2.0 framework for the projects) it was safer to not risk it.

If you're really concerned about conflicts or potential issues using beta software may not be for you. If you do want to try it and still have reservations I'd suggest that you do use a separate VM with VS 2010 on it.

I myself will be installing it side-by-side with VS 2008 on Vista (after backing up my VM) so if there are any problems I'll edit this post and report them.

I have Visual Studio 2008 Professional SP1 and Visual Studio 2010 Team Suite installed on my Windows 7 box. I have had zero issues so far.

Does that mean you won't? I have no idea.

I don't expect any problems with VS2010 RTM installed side by side with any of the previous versions.

But this is a beta. Installing it on your computer means you're asking to have your disk reformatted (metaphorically speaking). Be sure you're ready to reformat the disk you install it on.

For me, that means I run it in a VM.

That said, there's a good chance I'll install the RC when it ships, but that's just me trying to find the bugs so others don't have to.

You can install them side by side and it's supported by Microsoft to do so. For more information visit the Microsoft site on doing it located here, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms246609.aspx.

However you might want to determine why you would need to do such. Visual Studio 2010 support multi-targeting as in previous Visual Studio versions however it is much more advanced in 2010. You can easily upgrade you project to 2010 by using the project import and then target whatever .NET version you need. The only thing to note here is that once you upgrade to 2010, you will no longer be able to open the project in 2008 and the back conversion is not an easy process.

For what it's worth I've installed both VS2008 and VS2010 on the same box without issue. Uninstallation can cause some hiccups but those are directly related to VS2010 being new and shouldn't affect 2008.

I'd do it in a VM just to be safe, and so that I wouldn't have to uninstall it when the final version comes out. Also in the VM I could roll back to a clean OS and install RC versions. It's safer and you have more options in the VM, and I don't even notice the minor performance penalty. Someone go try it on their system and let us know.

I would suggest installing it on a VM if it's your work machine, but other than that, I usually install Beta products on my home machine as I have backups and don't mind reinstalling as my home pc is kinda like my sandbox

This is an old question, but just in case someone else is in need of the answer:

VS 2010 doesn't support .Net compact framework anymore, so you are stuck with WinPhone only. You basically have to use VS 2008 for your Windows mobile 6.5 projects. To me, this is just another reason to install 2008 and 2010 side-by-side.

I have profession ver of 2003, 2005, and 2008 all installed and they worked great on the same pc. I even installed the beta 2010 and it worked for a while in uninstalled because it didn't hav crystal reports. Just within the last month I purchased pro ver of 2010 and it blew my 2008 to shreds. I couldn't load data bases anymore, system would stal or stop period. So I'm loading it (2010) on a different PC. They seemed to merge and us settings from each other.

Will it cause problems?

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: No, but it's quite possible. If you're working on anything vaguely important, VM'ify the installation for now..

It has caused problems for me. I had to uninstall Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate off of my Windows 7 machine because VS 2008 keeps freezing up whether or not I have VS 2010 running.

If you use Crystal Reports you will have problems running Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 on the same machine.

I could not install VS 2008 Prof after I installed VS 2010 Ultimate. Guess you have to step up from smallest to largest version in order to have everything working.