Moving Visual Studio .NET 2003 settings to another PC

Moving your Visual Studio .NET 2003 settings to another PC is fairly simple. Close Visual Studio on both computers before starting. Perform the steps below while signed in to the Windows account whose settings you want to copy or restore.

On the source computer

1. Open Start → Run, type regedit, and press Enter to start Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1.
3. Right-click the 7.1 key, select Export, and save it as a .reg file.
4. In Windows Explorer, open %APPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio and create a ZIP archive of the 7.1 folder.

On Windows XP, %APPDATA% normally refers to C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data.

On the destination computer

1. Copy the exported .reg file and ZIP archive from the source computer.
2. Start Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio.
3. If a 7.1 key already exists, rename it to 7.1-backup to preserve the current settings.
4. Close Registry Editor, right-click the exported .reg file, and select Merge. Confirm the import when prompted.
5. In Windows Explorer, open %APPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio. If a 7.1 folder already exists, rename it to 7.1-backup.
6. Extract the ZIP archive into that directory so that the copied settings are in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1.

Visual C++ directory settings

Customized Visual C++ include and library search paths are stored separately in VCComponents.dat. If you need these settings too, copy that file, if present, from %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1 on the source computer to the corresponding folder on the destination computer. Back up any existing destination file first. See this discussion of Visual Studio .NET 2003 directory settings for details.

Start Visual Studio .NET 2003 on the destination computer and review your configuration. Once you’re satisfied that everything works as expected, you can remove the backups.