Recently another issue has come up another FAQ. Folks try using tools without installing Visual Studio and some additional work has to be done for Beta 1 or CTP of Visual Studio 2005. Just FYI, this is unsupported way to use VC++ tools and my recommendations are as-is with no guarantees. However if a workaround I list below does not work for you, please let me know, I would try to figure what I missed.

So let’s say you have a desktop A with VS2005 installed. You have another desktop B without VS2005 installed. You want to copy the content of "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\bin\" from desktop A to desktop B to build your code on desktop B. Here is what you need to do (obviously, it is one of possible ways to make this work):

1)              Copy compiler and tools from "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\bin\" to "%YOUR_TOOLS_FOLDER%\bin\"

c1.dll

c1xx.dll

c2.dll

cl.exe

cvtres.exe

lib.exe

link.exe

mt.exe

nmake.exe

rc.exe

rcdll.dll

\1033\

clui.dll

cvtresui.dll

linkui.dll

nmakeui.dll

2)              Copy CRT assembly from desktop A to desktop B

a.       On desktop A, go to %SYSTEMROOT%\WinSxS\x86_Microsoft.VC80.CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50124.12800_x-ww_eac26a7b\

b.      Copy msvcr80.dll from this folder to "%YOUR_TOOLS_FOLDER%\bin\" on desktop B

3)              Copy manifest for the CRT assembly

a.       On desktop A, go to either %SYSTEMROOT%\WinSxS\Policies\  or %SYSTEMROOT%\WinSxS\Manifests

b.      Copy x86_Microsoft.VC80.CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50124.12800_x-ww_eac26a7b.Manifest to "%YOUR_TOOLS_FOLDER%\bin\" on desktop B

c.       Rename this file to “Microsoft.VC80.CRT.manifest”

4)              Copying PDB Support

a.       Back desktop A, go to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\"

b.      Copy msobj80.dll, mspdb80.dll, mspdbcore.dll, mspdbsrv.exe to "%YOUR_TOOLS_FOLDER%\bin\" on desktop B

You should be able to compile and link your code. If you are not, please let me know about this, I would try to investigate why it does not work.