Microsoft Help Viewer can be used as an independent Application?

Question

I have a machine with Windows 8 where I\'ve installed VS2013 without Help viewer, and a VirtualMachine with the same

Answer 1

You ask multiple questions. I did not tried to reproduce so i can not answer your first question. But i can answer the title question:

Microsoft Help Viewer cannot be just downloaded. It is only shipped by Visual Studio and VS ISO Shell based products. So you cannot provide help content with Help Viewer for systems without Visual Studio... Kind of... useless :/

But on Windows 8 there is something similar so you can use some features of Help Viewer.

Source here.

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Alternative Software: If you mean open the help files, I only know H3Viewer and some example projects where you can open files: Help Viewer 2 Examples.

If you mean "take other help formats": the good old HTML Help (chm), MS Help (h2x) and a simple Website are some formats you can use.