Q:

.net above 3.5 not recognized in visual studio

I cant access .net version 4.5 in visual studio.
I need to create a server.  After doing some research it seemed preferable to use the WCF libraries as opposed to the TcpClient.  However visual studio only allows me to use .Net version up to 3.5.  I have up to 4.6 installed on my machine.
C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.5 is the highest framework available in this directory.
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319 and C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319 are the highest available folders installed.
I ran this tool for all the frameworks: netfx_setupverifier.exe
It had a rc of 0 for all.
I ran this to try to fix things NetFxRepairTool.exe
I tried to install the framework required for WCF and it refuses to install saying that the framework is already installed.
Visual studio refuses to see any framework above 3.5.
Any idea how to fix this?

A:

If I remember correctly, each version of Visual Studio is "capped" to a specific version of the framework to a degree (e.g. Visual Studio 2008 caps at .NET 3.5, 2005 caps to .NET 2.0, etc.).
Assuming that you have all of the appropriate service packs and updates installed (and it sounds like you have .NET 4.0 installed as well), this may simply be a limitation of Visual Studio 2008. You may be able to access .NET 4.0, but I'm quite sure that 4.5 won't be accessible.
It's likely that you would need to download a more recent version of Visual Studio such as Visual Studio 2012 or higher to target .NET 4.5 properly. 
If you are going to be upgrading, I'd recommend using the latest free version of the IDE, Visual Studio Community Edition, which should give you the option of targeting any version of the framework that you would like.

