Microsoft don’t support using .NET 3.5 in Windows 2000, which is particularly annoying, especially if, like me, you have a client who has 8 out of 12 PCs still using Windows 2000.
So, I decided to have a go and see if I could find any way of doing it. This is completely unsupported, and if it breaks anything, don’t blame me, but it is actually fairly straightforward and it seems to work fine to me (although I doubt it works with things like WPF, but if anyone tries it, please leave a comment to say how it goes)…
- Make sure you have Windows 2000 SP4 installed
- You may need to install KB 835732 before step 3
- Install .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1
Now, there are 2 ways of continuing. Either you can copy over all the .NET 3.5 assemblies (you’ll have them on a .NET 3.5 PC in the Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.5 folder). You can either dump them in the application folder or probably register them in the GAC (not tried it, but it should work).
Alternatively, try running your application. You will probably get a load of AssemblyReferenceFailedExceptions. Copy in the required DLL from the above folder into your application folder for each one.
It should all work now!
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Tags: .NET, .NET 3.5, .NET 3.5 SP1, .NET Framework, 2000, Coding, Dodgy, VB.NET, Windows, Windows 2000, Workarounds
[...] mentioned earlier how to install .NET framework 3.5 in Windows 2000. I have been testing this on 7 Windows 2000 [...]
hey, im a software developer and a computer savy, but i just really dont understand the explination about how to intall the net framework on windows 2000, if you could elaborate a bit more i would really love it.
[...] had a comment that my previous post explaining how to install .NET 3.5 in Windows 2000 wasn’t very clear, so I’ll try to [...]
Hi! I like your srticle and I would like very much to read some more information on this issue. Will you post some more?
Windows 2000 is outdated and should be abolished. Plz come up with some new stuff rather than sticking to old 2000 and its woes.
Actually, the point was that even though Windows 2000 is pretty old, it can handle most of the stuff that .NET 3.5 will do, which means that you can use .NET 3.5 (fairly new stuff) on it. I’m sorry if you don’t like me posting entries about this, but frankly it is the most popular topic in terms of readership and if you don’t like it, no one is asking you to read it. I have plenty of other blog posts on other topics that you can read if you want.
Hi thanks,
we use a Windows 2000 Server Terminalservices for special Insurance calculating software (around 30 different products) .. in Windows 2000 Terminalservices is FREE … so it saved us around 30000 EURO licensing fees … now some programs are using NET 3.5 , so you see it is a topic which MATTERS … I will try to save that licensing fee for my company !
Thanks for your TOPIC
I’m using .Net 3.5 mostly for Linq and all the extension methods it provides. Thanks to your post it looks like my program is running well on a Win2k virtual machine (my Win2k VM requires like 1/3 of the memory my XP VM does, so I’m quite happy as I can run more in parallel for my tests).
Thanks!