Installing new .NET versions on a Windows 7 VM

In this post, I will explain how to install .NET Framework 4.8 on a Windows 7 VM.

Motivation

Virtual Machines running Microsoft Windows are frequently used for dynamic analysis of Windows executables. Windows 7 is still used for analysis VM, although it is no longer supported by Microsoft and ships with an outdated .NET version. If a sample requires a .NET version which is not present on the analysis VM, the execution fails and the file cannot be analysed. For this reason it might be required to install a recent .NET version on a Windows 7 VM.