How to Install .NET 3.5 in Windows 8 Offline from Windows DVD

Windows 8 comes with the latest version .NET 4.5 of the .NET framework. But most of the program available today are written using the .NET version 3.5, which means you have to install .NET 3.5 in order to run those programs. One way to do this is to download the 232 megabytes of offline installer from the Microsoft website. But if you do not have an Internet connection or you do not want to download so much data, then you can use your Windows 8 DVD to install .NET 3.5 on your PC without downloading anything from the Internet. Here is how :

For this to work, you should have Windows 8 DVD of the same edition as you have installed on your PC. To find out of you have Windows 8 32-bit or 64-bit installed, you can use the 64bit Checker tool.

  1. Insert the Windows 8 DVD in your optical disk drive and let Windows detect it. We are going to assume that your DVD drive uses the drive letter F:.
  2. Press Win + X hotkey and select Command Prompt (Admin) from the menu that pops up.

    How to Install .NET 3.5 in Windows 8 Offline

  3. In the command prompt window, type the following after replacing F: with your DVD drive letter. You can copy/paste it too after making changes to the DVD drive letter. In the following command my DVD drive letter is F:,
    Dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /All /Source:F:\sources\sxs /LimitAccess
  4. You would see that it has started to install .NET 3.5 (it also includes versions 3.0 and 2.0) from your Windows 8 DVD to your computer. The whole process should not take more than 10 minutes. In the end, it would show message that the operation was completed successfully.

    How to Install .NET 3.5 in Windows 8 Offline

  5. You can close the command prompt window. Now you can run any applications that are designed using the .NET version 3.5, 3.0 or 2.0. You have just installed .NET 3.5 without using the Internet on your Windows 8 PC.

Conclusion: The .NET 3.5 is included right on your Windows 8 DVD, but Windows does not install by default. Windows installs only the latest version (.NET 4.5) on your PC. But using the above method, you can install .NET 3.5 on your PC offline. This method is great for computers which do not have Internet access or have very slow Internet connection. But if your PC manufacturer did not supply you with the Windows DVD, then you have no option but to download and install .NET from the Internet.

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