Installing a Visual Studio 2010 development suite on Windows 11 is not all that complicated, once you get all the head banging and research out of the way first.
Originally, I was intending to use Visual Studio 2010 on Wine, believing it would be easier. But actually, Wine reports are discouraging this. I was, however, lucky enough to discover that similar steps reported for making it work with Wine, actually work EVEN BETTER for making it work on Windows 11. Go figure!
LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Results may vary. No guarantees about workability, appropriateness, or legality of advice. If you break your computer or software, that's your own fault, not mine. By following my instructions you assume all liability.
The main difficulty:
Visual Studio 10 checks against the registry, preventing a complete loading of the software if the version of NET 4 is too high.
Windows 11 installs NET 4.8, which is indeed too high for Visual Studio 2010
You will need to modify the registry keys that Visual Studio 2010 checks against. (Click on this link to read the Stack Overflow citation on why!)
HKEYLOCALMACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Client\Version
HKEYLOCALMACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Full\Version
On a Windows 10 machine, the key values are 4.6.00079
On a Windows 11 machine, the key values are 4.8
The values for both these keys should be temporarily changed to 4.0.30319
just prior to installing the entire development environment as below.
(of course, you must change permissions for these keys to access them!)
From the archive site, en_vs_2010_ult directory listing (archive.org)
Step 1) visual studio 2010 ultimate
Download the iso, mount as a drive, run SETUP.EXE as administrator, then eject.
If you changed the registry keys properly, the installer will only complain about NET 4 already having been installed. If you have not, the installer will refuse to install the software at all after about midway, complaining that the system already has a higher version of NET4 than it will install.
Step 2) visual studio 2010 service pack 1
Download the iso, mount as a drive, run SETUP.EXE as administrator, then eject.
Step 3) Windows SDK 7.1 for 64 bit computers
Download the iso, mount as a drive, install per instructions, then eject.
Step 4) Visual Studio 2010 service pack updates.
Download the archive file, extract all contents to a directory, then install per instructions.
Step 5) Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate should now be completely installed on your computer. I recommend you start it as an app, pin it to your Task Bar, then create, build, and debug a C++ console project.