If you want to run Visual Studio 2005 on Vista, you will need SP1 and an extra patch that is currently called Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista.
SP1 is now availabe for download at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/support/vs2005sp1/default.aspx. The beta of the Vista Update is also availabe now and the release version will be available after consumer launch on Jan 30th.
If you run SQL 2005, then do read a related article Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on "Microsoft Windows Server Longhorn" or Microsoft Windows Vista


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