[installation] How to install VS2015 Community Edition offline

When visiting Microsoft website to download VS2015 you can download a file of a few MB in size to install Visual Studio. When you open the file it acquires the files necessary from internet, but you can not choose where these files are stored. How can I download the entire installation of Visual Studio 2015 to perform an offline installation? For example, for multiple machines.

You can download visual studio community edition with /layout switch.

But I prefer to use /layout with /NoRefresh for my low-speed internet connection that downloading long more than a day.

vs_community.exe /layout /NoRefresh

Every time that you run the installer it searches for new updates and if it finds updates, start downloading them and consume more time and more bandwidth!

I think the ISO version is smaller than the Layout method because the ISO version is just in English or whatever language it is that you choose, however the "Layout" version is ALL of the languages available, So for example if the "Layout" version downloads a 3gb file(English Version) it will download the same 3gb file in another language that you will not ever use wasting your downloads, time and all that other good stuff.

The following worked for me on a Windows 8.1 machine to download and prepare the setup folder, and then on a Windows 10 laptop to install:

1. Go to https://my.visualstudio.com/downloads?q=visual%20studio%20community%202015
2. Select “Visual Studio Community 2015 with Update 3” x64, English, DVD, and Download.
3. Open the folder containing the download, which is called: en_visual_studio_community_2015_with_update_3_x86_x64_dvd_8923300.iso and its size is 7,617,847,296 bytes.
4. Right-click on the file name: Mount
5. On the mount folder, shift-right-click on an empty space: Open command window here
6. On the command window: vs_community.exe /layout "blah blah blah blah \Visual Studio 2015\Setup" (or whatever path you want; the Setup folder gets created).
7. Follow the dialog box instructions.

When I did this, it remained for exactly two hours and ten secs in the Acquiring: Optional items. Don’t despair.

When it completed, the size of the Setup folder was 12.9 GB. Compare with the size of the .iso above.

After completion, I succeeded on installing without a network connection, and that even though on completion I had got the following:

I bumped into this page "Download #VisualStudio 2015 (ISO + Web Installer)" (http://www.kunal-chowdhury.com/2015/07/download-visualstudio-2015.html) and the ISO link (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=615448&clcid=0x409) provided in this page seems to be valid.

I am downloading the ISO at this very moment.

Edit:

Was able to download the ISO and burned into a DVD. Also tried installing (only C/C++) on a 64-bit Windows 10 laptop and everything seems to work except that the installer couldn't find and had to go to Internet to download packages\vcRedistD12\1033\vcredist_x64.exe (although this file does exist in DVD and runnable).

As pointed in MSDN: Create an Offline Installation of Visual Studio:

To create an offline installation layout

1. Choose the edition of Visual Studio that you want to install from the my.visualstudio.com download page.

2. After you download the installer to a location on your file system, run "<executable name> /layout". For example, run: en_visual_studio_community_2015.exe /layout D:\VisualStudio2015

   By using the /layout switch, you can download almost all the installation packages, not just the ones that apply to the download machine. This approach gives you the files that you need to run this installer anywhere and it might be useful if you want to install components that weren't installed originally.

3. After you run this command, a dialog box will appear that allows you to change the folder where you want the offline installation layout to reside. Next, click the Download button.

   When the package download is successful, you should see a message that says Setup Successful! All specified components have been acquired successfully.

4. Locate the folder that you specified earlier. (For example, locate D:\VisualStudio2015.) This folder contains everything you need to copy to a shared location or install media.

   Caution: Currently, the Android SDK does not support an offline installation experience. If you install Android SDK Setup items on a computer that is not connected to the internet, the installation might fail. For more information, see the "Troubleshooting an offline installation" section in this topic.

5. Run the installation from the file location or from the install media.

For the latest VS2015 sp3, the command line shoud be:

en_visual_studio_community_2015_with_update_3_x86_x64_web_installer_8922963.exe /Layout c:\VS2015sp3_offline

It seems there are direct links and anyone could get it with a download manager.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/6/d/16dc7044-cd36-49b4-bdba-30166e07c786/vs2015.2.com_deu.iso

http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/d/c/fdce5d40-87d3-4bd6-9139-2a7638b96174/vs2015.2.com_enu.iso

http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/1/5/415ec933-31ee-443d-8bd6-55268d472331/vs2015.2.com_esn.iso

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/7/4/77471e13-cfac-43c2-b76e-459238142bd5/vs2015.2.com_fra.iso

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/9/9/5991bfbe-21d0-430a-ad1c-2aa8328a2d3e/vs2015.2.com_ita.iso

http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/a/1/ca188bdc-fead-4933-a699-4da31a4b04db/vs2015.2.com_rus.iso

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/4/a/34a0480a-effd-4e12-878b-d243bdbb4d2c/vs2015.2.com_kor.iso

http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/f/8/0f89c8af-9430-4c13-bf6a-d75b7513ac29/vs2015.2.com_chs.iso

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/2/c/12c9f1b7-71e2-46fc-a07b-e53b2a954c4c/vs2015.2.com_jpn.iso

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/1/8/7186591d-7877-4461-9b49-7e236846f526/vs2015.2.com_cht.iso

References from here

If you are a MSDN subscriber follow the steps below:

1. Go to msdn.microsoft.com and sign in.

2. Go to Programs->Subscriptions->Overview

3. Click on Subscriber Access

4. Click on Product Keys ( Claim key as needed)

5. Select your Visual Studio Preference.

6. click the EXE drop down list, and select DVD. This will change it to an .ISO image.By default the web installer is selected,

7. Click green download button(approximately 7.12Gb)

note: I used a Virtual-CloneDrive-5.5 to mount this ISO and install

edit:

Starting from visual studio 2017 Microsoft is no longer offering .ISO images. For the new visual studio 2017 you have to download vs_community.exe from here and create an offline instalation folder:

vs_community.exe --layout c:\vs2017offline

Then, in order to install from that folder you have to first install certificates from \certificates in the download folder and then run the installation.

I was unable to find the direct download detailed in davidnr's post. You can download the ISO directly from the Microsoft Download Center here: https://download.microsoft.com/download/b/e/d/bedddfc4-55f4-4748-90a8-ffe38a40e89f/vs2015.3.com_enu.iso.

Even if you download the ISO files there will be lots of stuff not included in the installer which requires connection to internet when installing, for example:

• Emulators for Windows Mobile
• Windows 10 SDK
• Tools for Windows 10 Universal Apps
• GitHub Extension for Visual Studio and Git CLI
• C#/.NET Xamarin
• Visual C++ Mobile Development (iOS support)
• Joyent Node.js
• Java SE Development Kit
• Android SDK, NDK, and emulator

Perhaps some of them are not possible to include but it is annoying nonetheless.

You can download the ISO from https://beta.visualstudio.com/downloads/ (even if it has "beta" in the URL you'll have the latest stable version. Currently update 3)

That is direct link to ISO file

[https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=615448&clcid=0x409][1]

Go to https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs.aspx

Navigate to "Visual studio downloads", select "Visual studio 2015"

Next, choose format "ISO"