So I have to say that I was pumped up when Microsoft released the new 1.2 extensions for SharePoint (with Visual Studio 2008 support), but then had the air taken out of me when I went to run the extension setup only to find that it was not support on a 64bit platform. Now I have to get on my soapbox here a little and say that, with Microsoft pushing extremely hard the 64bit architecture I find it a little puzzling that they wouldn’t release a 64 bit version of these tools. If you think about it, they have 64bit versions of SharePoint, and to now, if you were doing any SharePoint dev you are typically going to have a whole SharePoint rig locally for testing purposes. So again I ask, why wouldn’t Microsoft release a 64bit version of these tools?
Ok, enough of the soap box, on to the meat of this post, actually getting the toolset to install (and mostly work) on a 64bit machine. NOTE: This is not officially supported and I have not fully tested debugging yet, so please use at your own risk.
In order to do this you will need to download the ORCA msi editor available here.
Step 1. Download the VseWss12.exe from Microsoft site. You can get it here.
Step 2. In a command prompt window, navigation to the directory where you downloaded the extensions. Once there you will need to extract MSI from the executable you downloaded. You can do that with the following command
VSeWSSv12.exe /extract:c:\extractedVSE\
Step 3. Once extracted, you will notice that there should be a file named VSeWSSv12.msi in your extracted location. This is not the file that we will be running through ORCA to remove some of the 64 bit dependencies.
Step 4. Start ORCA.exe and open the file VSeWSSv12.msi from the extracted location.
Step 5. Once the msi is loaded into ORCA you should see the following.
Step 6. Navigate to the CustomAction node in the left hand column and select it. You should see the following 
Step 7. In order to get enable 64 bit installation you will need two delete two keys located in the Custom Actions key.
a. Delete the X64System key shown on the right hand side of the application. (Shown below)
b. Delete the WssNotInstalled key shown on the right hand side of the application. (Shown Below)
Step 8. After deleting the specified key, you will need to save the changes back to the MSI. You can do this by Selecting the File->Save menu within the ORCA tool.
Once you have saved the MSI you can now execute it like you would any MSI application. Here are some screen shots of the fully functioning VSeWSSv12 extension installation.
Tags: Visual Studio, WSS Exentsions
SharePoint Developer,Architect,General all around technologist (ESX Server, Web Development, .NET, Windows 7, Citrix,etc), husband and father of three 
John,
Great info, I will try it right away!
Thanks
/Jonas
[...] of us that runs Vista 64 bit so we can install the new VSeWSS 1.2 with support for VS 2008. Just go here to see how to solve it. Thanks [...]
That is an awesome work around.
Thanks
Wes
Cool work around!
Thanks a lot!
Great Tip! I’ve been working through this issue for quite some time.
Thank you!
Great work but has anyone been able to deploy WSP solution files using this method?
For example when creating a webpart and deploying from VS2008 I get the error message:
“Object reference not set to an instance of an object.” and it does not deploy
___
Vista Ultimate X64 / VS 2008 / MOSS 2007 SP1
Very nice post. Have you tested the debugging support?
I see the “Object reference not set to an instance of an object.” mentioned earlier. I don’t think this successfully allows deployment.
Thanks,
Mark
Have you had a chance to test this more? How is it working out? Debugging working?
I have sucessfully installed both VS2008 and VS Extenesion 1.2 for SharePoint.
However, when I open the project templates, I have Work Flow templates under SharePoint, but not Web Parts.
Anyone else have this problem?
I’ve done this and all my templates seem fine – the only problem is that I can’t seem to get the WSP viewer working at all? anybody else?
Did anyone resolve the “object reference not set to an instance…”? Please let me know your solution! Thankx
A1 Sir, A1
This worked to install vsewss1.1 on 64bit too.
Since I am running strictly oldschool stuff, for the time being, and indeed am using 64bit winsrv2003, this is a great workaroung.
Need to verify that most stuff works though.
But thanks a million indeed!
Hi everybody,
thanks John for your post it is was an awesome Post.
I also add the “object reference not set to an instance…” .
Instead of using VS2008 to deploy the WSP, I used the sharepointinstaller – 18673 which you can find on codeplex.
And I was able to deploy my stuff.
There is Gold and then there is this post.
I am curious how you figured this out. I can imagine deleting the “64″ key but what’s up with “WSSNotInstalled?”
Folks at MS really (really!) need to take a vacation, come back and renew their vows to 64 bit.
Great work. thanks lot
Unfortunately you’re going to continue to get a number of unresolvable errors with this procedure. I would like to recommend you use the VSeWSS 1.3 CTP which was released this week. It supports running on x64 OS with SharePoint installed. We built private web services to enable the Visual Studio x86 to SharePoint x64 cross process calls.
My blog has the link to the CTP download.
Regards,
Paul
Great Info. !! Keep it up !!!
[...] of us that runs Vista 64 bit so we can install the new VSeWSS 1.2 with support for VS 2008. Just go here to see how to solve it. Thanks [...]