what sdk and .net framework and visual studio express for windows 7.1

the last time i messed with it was visual studio express 2008.
for windows 7 sp1 64-bit, i tried downloading and installing visual studio express 2015,
it installed mostly successful but gave me some gripe about .net framework and having an RTM version of it. I also came across various Windows SDK's, one of which says it installs visual studio C compiler.

I'm pretty much only interested in C/C++ in windows, what is the proper and best way to do it for free at home on windows 7 sp1 64-bit?

If you want to go for Visual Studio, I would stick to 2015 as of now. The official download site is here:
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/d...studio-vs.aspx

I would go for Community instead of Express, because it includes many features of the paid version (like add-ins and multi-language and multi-platform solutions) in a single package, still for free. It also includes many more options besides C++, if you ever want to experiment those. The install will include on its own the required SDK and the .NET framework 4.6 (while compiled C++ software doesn't depends on it, Visual Studio itself is heavily based on .net).

Visual Studio is in itself an enormous program, maybe overkill for many tasks. You could also try other compilers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...B.2B_compilers