In an era of high-speed broadband, it is easy to forget that reliable, high-bandwidth internet is not a universal constant. For enterprise environments with strict security policies, developers on ships or remote research stations, or simply users with metered connections, downloading a 30+ GB IDE on the fly is impractical.

vs_enterprise.exe --layout D:\VS2022_DevTeam --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.NativeDesktop --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.ManagedDesktop --includeRecommended --lang en-US This downloads only the C++ desktop workload and the .NET desktop workload, plus all recommended components. This is far more practical for a USB drive.

For Visual Studio 2022, the primary bootstrapper is named vs_enterprise.exe , vs_professional.exe , or vs_community.exe . Open a command prompt as Administrator. Navigate to the directory containing your bootstrapper. The magic command is --layout .