title: Can I disable all compilation in Visual Studio?
body: <p>This is a new one for me. I have been asked, for legal reasons, to setup a laptop with Visual Studio, but to disable the ability to compile projects/solutions. The purpose is to enable browsing of the source code, but not allow building or executing it.</p>
  
  <p>Yes, I know this is really a stupid question and unfortunately I can't get into too many details. I've asked about using alternative text editors, but I have been told no. So until I can prove it isn't possible (or that I have at least made a reasonable effort), I have to try and make this work. Notepad++ would be an excellent alternative, but that has been rejected.</p>
  
  <p>This would be in Visual Studio 2010 or later. Is there any way that I can do this?</p>
  
  <p><br>
  <strong>UPDATE</strong></p>
  
  <p>After trying <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/18197678/366904">Marius Bancila's suggestion</a> of removing the compilers and MSBuild, I was surprised to find out that VS continued to work fine (except for building, of course). I did not expect that functionality like <kbd>F12</kbd> (Go To Definition) would continue to work.</p>
  
  <p>This may mean that there still remains the ability to build something somewhere somehow. But as it stands with MSBuild permanently deleted and the Visual Studio Build command not working, it'll take some effort to get around it (if a way in fact does exist).</p>