And the madness continues... But this time there's some real poetic justice.
This entire ordeal started when I received a couple of zip files from a prospect who simply asked me to look into the code. I unzipped the files and instantly recognized dozens of C# files, which I was able to view in any of the many editors I use. But surrounding the C# code was a lot of infrastructure - and code that was clearly IDE-generated - and I realized that to get a complete picture of this situation I'd need the Microsoft IDE to look around.
I had been told that the code was written in VS2005, so I went looking on the web for it. Go to the Redmond Death Star's website and of course you'll be really hard pressed to find any information about VS2005, as they are now pushing VS2008. Figuring that VS2008 probably did everything that VS2005 did, I figured what harm could it do? (Yes, I know, I know...)
VS2008, while saying it could convert the VS2005 files, has been faithfully
unable to open many of them. Thinking that the files are really there and they just aren't being converted properly, I went on a search for VS2005 - anywhere. Deep, hidden under the surface of the RDS's website there are still lingering pages to VS2005, so I did in fact find it, and was able to download it, and all it cost was a couple
more hours of my weekend.

After the couple of hour download, I realized that VS2005 comes as an .img file, which - according to the website - is simply a DVD image that should be burned onto a DVD. So that's exactly what I did. (Oh, did I mention that at some point in this disaster I had to buy a bunch of DVD-Rs for this?) But guess what? Vista doesn't recognize the .img format! 30 minutes of burning a DVD later, Vista brings up the File List window, as if to say "hey man... now what?".
I could be frustrated. I could be bitter. I mean hey, this disaster has cost me several days of my life and I'm no closer to a resolution than when I started. But as luck would have it, this is where things turned truly humorous. And seriously, I am not making this next part up.
Seriously.
There is a program called "Alcohol" that knows how to read .img files. Using Alcohol, I was able to finally install VS2005 on Vista. Without Alcohol, it wasn't going to happen.
So with plenty of Alcohol, I have successfully installed VS2005. That would be good except VS2005 doesn't run on Vista without a service pack and a patch for the service pack, which have been downloading for the past hour or so. When these are done I
might have a working VS2005, but then I have to open the project and see if these hours of downloading, installing, uninstalling, etc. have given me
anything that can read the files that I was sent.
Oh yeah, in order to install VS2005 I had to uninstall everything I did earlier. So I seem to have a knack for returning to ground zero. It's funny that I've never had to do that with U2, BASIC, PHP, C, C++, Java, or any of the other languages that run on Linux.
Maybe this just needs more Alcohol, perhaps?