Generally installing an application on a computer is something that is quite easy to accomplish, as all you really need to do is click a few buttons, right? Yes that is typically true, but recently I was proven wrong on this matter.
I work for a company that provides full IT services for multiple clients and one of our clients utilizes a very old application that requires .NET Framework 1.1, and the program needed to be installed on a new Windows 7 machine, no problem right?
Well as it turns out, the .NET Framework 1.1 being that it is so old is not actually compatible with the Windows 7 64-bit operating system and attempting to install it results in errors, and even worse I couldnt install this clients application unless we got this old .NET version installed. Simply installing .NET 4 would not suffice, it expressly needed 1.1.
Before starting I recommend creating a folder for the installers, lets say C:\dotnet, and we will download all of our files here.
First download the following two files:
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Redistributable Package
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1
The 2nd one go ahead and rename it to ”dotnetfxsp1.exe”
Also download these hotfixes, I will recommend you download these to their own folder at a location such as C:\dotnet\hotfix to differentiate the files.
ASP.NET Security Update for .NET 1.1 Service Pack 1
Privilege Not Held hotfix for .NET 1.1
This last hotfix does not seem to be available to download from Microsoft anymore so I have hosted it here for you to download.
Now with those downloaded first lets go to each of these .exe files and do the following:
- Right click and choose “properties”
- Click on the compatibility tab
- Check the box “Run in compatibility mode”
- Choose Windows 7
- Also check the “Run as administrator” box.
- Click OK
Do the above for each of the files we just downloaded. Now for the next part we are going to run these via the command prompt with a few switches. Click the start menu and in the search field type “CMD” when you see cmd.exe appear then right click it and choose “run as administrator.” In your newly opened command prompt window enter the following commands, if you saved your files in a different location then change the paths accordingly, also take note of spaces in the commands:
dotnetfx.exe /c:”msiexec.exe /a netfx.msi TARGETDIR=C:\DotNet”
dotnetfxsp1.exe /Xp:C:\DotNet\netfxsp.msp
msiexec.exe /a c:\DotNet\netfx.msi /p c:\DotNet\netfxsp.msp
After finishing both these command we just need to run the two hotfixes we downloaded:
NDP1.1sp1-KB891865-X86.exe
NDP1.1sp1-KB886903-X86.exe
Once these are done, you should be able to properly install your program that requires .NET 1.1. Note if .NET was not installed correctly the application will continue to say it needs it installed.
Good Luck!