I have started working on a new project in .NET and the Problem Domain (PD) was modeled in Visio UML. Fantastic. Now I wanted to forward engineer the UML into C# classes to begin development, but wait, I can’t. I only have Visio 2007 Professional, and the forward engineering features are only available in the Visio for Enterprise Architects version. Okay, not a problem, I’ll go download it from MSDN.
After starting the installation, I got an error message, “You must first install one of the qualified Visual Studio editions”. What the hell? Visual Studio 2008 isn’t good enough? I sure as hell don’t want to install another, older version Visual Studio just so I can install Visio for EA.
After poking around, I came across this registry trick. Visio for Enterprise Architects is looking for the existence of the following key:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Setup\VS\VSTD\
Within this key should be the String value “ProductDir”. The text value for ProductDir can be anything other than a null value.
Once you add this key to your registry, the Visio for Enterprise Architects installer will work as hoped.
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8 comments
Hasan
Monday, December 21, 2009 at 6:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Very helpful !
Thanks,
– Hasan
Scott
Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 11:46 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Thanks, but Visio 2003 for Enterprise Architects was a no go in Windows 7 x64. However, I was able to add the ProductDir key to:
HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Setup\VS\VSTD\
Visio 2003 for Enterprise Architects on Windows 7 automagically worked after this change.
-Scott Owen
Eric Silva
Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 11:51 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@Scott
I just ran into this problem the other night installing Visio EA on my own Windows 7 x64 laptop. I had not started hacking at the registry yet. Thanks for the tip.
-Eric
Andrew
Tuesday, January 5, 2010 at 2:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Note, the text value for the string must not be NUll. I tried with null and it did not work. I added the text “test” and Voila!
Thanks,
Andrew
Moojjoo
Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 11:55 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This is exactly what I needed. Thanks
Rory
Monday, March 8, 2010 at 7:20 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
fyi if trying to install Visio for enterprise architects 2003 then the required registry key is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1\Setup\VS\Arch with a string value ‘ProductDir’.
Pradeep
Friday, May 7, 2010 at 2:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
More information can be found here:
http://pradeep1210.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2E84C99518D46BB4!306.entry
Lew
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 6:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Worked for me. Thanks.