Hello,

The basic process is as follows. Naturally, there are about a million things that can go wrong, but without being at the workstation in question, debugging these sorts of issues is very difficult.

1) Locate the source installation of the module
2) Find the location of the project and support files within the zip files. IIRC, this is in the resources.zip file, which is within the larger zip package.
3) Unzip this ENTIRE set of files to a directory on your drive. You should now have a .vbproj, .ascx, .ascx.vb, and .vb files unzipped on your drive. The easiest choice for a target directory is desktopmodules/[modulename], because it will prevent your having to copy project files as a post-build step (if that didn't make sense, just unzip the files there and be done with it).
4) Load the project in visual studio. Verify that the other files in the project load with the project, and that you can open them.
5) Compile the project. Here's where you're likely to get errors that you'll have to figure out on your own. These will almost certainly include reference errors, which are corrected by adding references to the project (I think last time I did this I had to re-add the DotNetNuke.dll assembly).
6) Because some modules were developed in previous versions of DNN and VS, you are likely to have warnings remaining after you correct the errors. For example, the module may call obsoleted DNN functions. Correcting these are usually optional, depending on how OCD you are.
6) Once the project compiles, you'll have an assembly in the bin/debug subdirectory. This assembly will need to be copied into your DNN installation's bin directory. You can configure VS to automatically do this through the settings page, by specifying the output directory.
7) Run your DNN website and verify that the module is working (plenty can go wrong here as well).

I just wrote these off the top of my head, so YMMV. But hopefully this will point you in the right direction!

Brandon

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Brandon Haynes
BrandonHaynes.org