Searching for cracks, illegal methods of using a software is not good and shouldn't help you a bit on CodeProject, or any other forum. We're all here programmers and we know the pain of developing a good software; so even if we knew we wouldn't share any method to help you not pay the developer.
Somehow, talking about free? Why not install the Visual Studio Express edition? It is for free and you can develop basic softwares in Visual C#, Visual Basic, websites and web applications in it.
Download overview for Visual Studio[
^]. Download and install this free edition, its legal and free; both in one time.
Last thing, I don't have any information on installing Visual Studio on XP and I believe there won't be any problem with it at all, this issue might be a framework issue or something like that. You should post it on their forum not here.