5

I want to take some of MSDN help files offline on a windows machine which does not have visual studio installed on it. the problem is that I cannot find a way to get and install Help Library manager and Help viewer without installing the visual studio or sql server. How can I install them without installing the visual studio or sql server?

Fred Jand
  • 699
  • 7
  • 25

3 Answers3

7

I just wrote an answer on how to do this for an older question, which can be found here.

For convenience, here are the essential steps to get Help Viewer 2.2 to run without going to the trouble of installing a complete copy of Visual Studio 2015:

  • Most of the files required by HlpViewer.exe can be found on the Visual Studio DVD in two different MSI packages. By passing some additional command line arguments to msiexec, it's quite easy to install them manually:
    msiexec.exe /i help3_vs_net.msi VS_SETUP=1
    msiexec.exe /i vs_minshellcore.msi MSIFASTINSTALL="7" VSEXTUI="1"

While this installs most necessary files, it doesn't account for all of them ... to keep things simple, I copied the rest of them from a working installation on another computer:

  • C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\HelpLibrary2
    Essentially only contains a CatalogType.xml and some empty directories.
  • C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Help Viewer\v2.2\CatalogInfo\VS11_en-us.cab

Moreover, it's necessary to provide the application with a valid ContentStore path by importing the following .reg file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Help\v2.2\Catalogs\VisualStudio14]
"LocationPath"="%ProgramData%\\Microsoft\\HelpLibrary2\\Catalogs\\VisualStudio14\\"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Help\v2.2\Catalogs\VisualStudio14\en-US]
"SeedFilePath"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Help Viewer\\v2.2\\CatalogInfo\\VS11_en-us.cab"
"catalogName"="Visual Studio Documentation"

Finally, I created a new Application Shortcut and changed its Target: to read as follows:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Help Viewer\v2.2\HlpViewer.exe" /catalogName VisualStudio14 /launchingApp Microsoft,VisualStudio,14

Et voilà!, with that HlpViewer.exe should finally execute without any problems!

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Michael Stumpfl
  • 331
  • 3
  • 5
  • Update 1: for non-English one can also install Localization Package between the two msiexec calls: like for example `msiexec.exe /i helpLP\help3_lp_net.msi VS_SETUP=1` from the non-English MS VS CommEd ISO – Arioch 'The Oct 03 '16 at 09:11
  • Update 2: The possible problem: MS Help shows document trees, but not a single page of those - only the Welcome Page is stuck forever and can not be switched. Reason: reg-file. Your example ends with "VS11_en-us.cab" but actually one must look into the folder and see the actual files there! For me, after carving MS Help from MS VS2015 CommEd - those were "MSHelp3_1_en-us.cab" and "MSHelp3_1_ru-ru.cab" - the reg-file should reference any of those instead to make it work. I guess every user should see which cab files does their own installation carry – Arioch 'The Oct 03 '16 at 09:12
  • "Essentially only contains a CatalogType.xml and some empty directories." - and all those imported offline books, if any :-) – Arioch 'The Oct 03 '16 at 09:12
1

In MSDN to USB v2.5, you don't have to have any Visual Studio IDE installed: https://stackoverflow.com/a/66595500/3268088

captain_majid
  • 140
  • 13
0

I know its old question. I just run into a problem involving Help Viewer. my recovery steps are :

  1. get sqlexress installer (if you haven't got one)
  2. after extracting the files, check its folder and find for "help" folder I got mine "SQLEXPRWT_x64_ENU\redist\VisualStudioShell\Help\x64"
  3. run install.exe with administration priveleges (Run as Administrator)
  4. all done.
Sandigi
  • 1