Download sites for old, free MS compilers and IDEs

[UPDATE 2015-03-13] I do not recommend installing VS2010 Express (or Professional). This program is very difficult to remove and has become obsolete, with VS2013. If you are stuck with this on your computer you may be able to remove it by following these steps.

1. Make sure you have copies of the VS2010 SP1 installer. The web installer is fine, but the iso may come in useful. Don't bother creating a manual system restore point. Even when you roll back changes, the issues that cause the majority of problems are not resolved. However I guess it can't hurt either. If you really want to cover your bases, the best thing would be to make a recovery disk and an disk image. This way you can roll back changes if they go awry.
2. If you have installed VS2010 SP1, you must remove this first. You should be able to remove it from add/remove programs in the control panel. If not try
• C:\ProgramData\VS\vs2010sp1\SetupCache\setup.exe /uninstall /force
• Download the installer and run VS10sp1-KB983509.exe /uninstall /force
• Download and extract the iso image and run setup.exe /uninstall /force
• Reinstall SP1 and then try uninstalling it from add/remove programs in control panel. You may need to reinstall VS2010 VC10 or VCS10 before SP1.
3. Remove VS2010 Tools for Office Runtime and VS2010 ADO.NET Entity Framework. You may need to remove these before SP1.
4. Use the VS2010 uninstall utility documented first here then later here. Make sure you use the options in the post /full to remove everything!

Note this took many iterations to actually get all of VS2010 off of my system, so be prepared for frustration and irritation, but persevere and it can be done. Just make sure you have copies of the installer so that you can reinstall and try to remove everything in the correct order again! You may have an issue removing or reinstalling Windows SDKs. If so see Upgrading to Visual Studio 2013.

[UPDATE 2014-11-13] Free x86 and AMD64 (x86-64) VC90 c-compilers for Python-2.7 are now available from Microsoft. The free VC90 compilers can be used to install package source that contains c-extensions using either pip, setuptools or distutils. For example, pip install dulwich will build and install the Python Git implementation which contains several speedups as c-extensions.

[UPDATE 2013-10-03, 2014-04-16] Sad to report that clicking on #1 MS Visual Studio 2008 Express states that it has been retired. Oh, yes! VS2008 Express didn't allow targeting x64 platforms, without some serious hoop-jumping, but VS2010 Express does, and VS2010 also lets you select the V90 toolset, so building shared objects for Python-2.7 is no problem. Also, SDK7 has the exact same compilers as V90, and it is still supported so they are more current. Ditto for SDK7.1 & V100. Oh no! Does this mean we finally have to switch to Python 3? If you really want VS2008, the web installer does however still work. Grab it from my dropbox.

1. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions with SP1: This one is necessary for python 2.7.3 extensions. You can't get it from the Visual Studio page anymore, now that they've moved on to 2012, but download links for vcsetup.exe which install MSVC90 Express are in the Microsoft Download Center, as are vcssetup (C#), vbsetup.exe (vbs) and vwsetup.exe (web). You also get the opportunity to install SQL Server 2008 and Silverlight SDK. Visual Studio 2008 Express has been discontinued, and is obsolete because Visual Studio 2010 Express includes the V90 toolset. See update note at top of page. Not sure if Visual Studio 2008 SP1 download will install for free, but it may. VS2008 is not required to build Python-2.7 extensions, instead use SDK7 which replaces the v90 compilers.
2. Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1: You cannot build 64-bit applications with the free version of VC90 unless you have Windows SDK 7. Note this *not* 7.1, which is VC100, also note that .NET Framework 3.5 is part of Windows 7, so you don't have to download it separately, and of course make sure that you get all updates before installing. Specifically you must have SP1. The paths in vcvarsall.bat are incorrect, you will need to fix them to use pip with v90. Otherwise use sdk7 shell and follow the directions in the post on installing Python x64 extensions with pip. 
3. Visual Studio 2010 Express is still available from the main VS site. They have 2012 and 2010, and all of the flavors.
4. Microsoft SDK 7.1 has some issues with VC100. Basically you should follow this procedures:
1. Visual Studio 2010 RTM
2. Windows SDK 7.1
3. Visual Studio 2010 SP1
4. Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Compiler Update for the Windows SDK 7.1
See these posts:
Setup & Install by Heath Stewart
Visual C++ Team Blog
FIX: Visual C++ compilers are removed ...

5. Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4
Beware here, you might run into this error, which is very confusing, the installer quits with the message "Installation of the “Microsoft Windows SDKfor Windows 7” product has reported the following error: Please refer to Samples\Setup\HTML\ConfigDetails.htm document for further information." Totally useless, but further examination of the log file or googling around you might see the real source of the error, it's not SP1 but the redistributable that is too new: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Setup\SFX\vcredist_x64.exe installation failed with return code 5100". The solution is to remove the redistributables and then reinstall them later. See this knowledge base article:
Windows SDK Fails to Install with Return Code 5100

6. Upgrade to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1. See this link for what's in SP1.
   Description of Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1
7. Download the update after you follow the procedures here:
   Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Service Pack 1 Compiler Update for the Windows SDK 7.1