Can Visual Studio 6/VB6 be installed in Windows 11? Not for me ...

I know that many people have successfully installed Visual Studio 6, in particular VB6, but I have followed all the advice and it is not working for me. I get as far as this screen
Attachment 186131
after which I see this
Attachment 186132
Instead of this
Attachment 186133
I have been working on this for the best part of two days and still haven't managed to install VB6 :( I am almost at my wits end so any help will be very much appreciated

What 'advice' did you follow? Are you installing with Admin rights? Did you uncheck the (I believe, if memory serves me), the Data Objects during installation?

So, I guess, you need to make sure you are following the 'right' advice...may I make this recommendation?...

https://www.vbforums.com/showthread....hlight=install

should be same for win 11...I have done it twice on 11, and SEVERAL times on 10.

Sam

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Originally Posted by SamOscarBrown

What 'advice' did you follow?

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Thanks for your reply and suggestions Sam.

https://www.codeproject.com/Articles...68#xx5907168xx
This is the same advice I followed when installing on Windows 10 on two different computers

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Are you installing with Admin rights?

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Right clicked on SETUP.EXE and chose Run as administartor

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Did you uncheck the (I believe, if memory serves me), the Data Objects during installation?

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It didn't get that far - the Custom options form never appeared (see my original attachments)

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So, I guess, you need to make sure you are following the 'right' advice...may I make this recommendation?...

https://www.vbforums.com/showthread....hlight=install

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I will look at that carefully and see if there is anything there that is substantively different from the article I referred to above

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should be same for win 11...I have done it twice on 11, and SEVERAL times on 10.

Sam

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I have looked at the articles you referred to and I have been removing the folders and registry keys that are mentioned. I have a Powershell script to do this which I can attach if you think it would be helpful.

I have turned off UAC and disabled Defender and still I am not getting beyond "Starting Visual Studio 6.0 Setup, please wait ... ". I never get to the screen showing the Custom options. The Enterprise Setup screen (which should appear immediately after "Starting Visual Studio 6.0 Setup, please wait ... ") never appears - see prior post.

I have copied the entire contents of the original CD to a local folder (e.g. C:\MyTempFolder) and am running setup (as Admin) from there. I even tried using SUBST F: “C:\MyTempFolder” and ran the setup from drive F.

There have been several similar threads here over the past few years regarding issues installing on Windows 10 or Windows 11, and it seems that, for unknown reasons, some people just have trouble getting the installation to work properly, even if they follow every step that others have used to get it successfully installed.

That being said, an alternative solution would be to install something like VirtualBox, and then create a Virtual Machine that runs an older version of Windows (that you have media and a valid license for), such as Windows XP or Windows 7, and then install VB 6.0 inside of that VM.

P.S. One of the articles refers to a Visual Studio 6 Installer Wizard here
http://nuke.vbcorner.net/Articles/VB...S/Default.aspx

but the download page itself requests that "PLEASE STOP DONATION - WE ARE HAVING DISASTER RECOVERY - HOPE TO FULLY BACK ONLINE ASAP". I did try this some months ago and did make a donation which was eventually refunded. I never did get the download so I believe the suggestion to use this Wizard is no longer practicable.

Well, that's certainly one possibility (the VM suggestion) but that would be admitting defeat :o. All in all, it has been a very frustrating experience especially since we know that others have been successful doing the same thing.

BTW I forgot to mention that my Win 11 Pro version is 22H2 - I wonder if others have succeeded with this particular version. Could TPM be an issue (just a thought)?

Another possibility, which I am very seriously considering, is to ditch Windows 11 in favour of Windows 10. My new Dell computer (the one I am having problems with) was supplied with Windows 11 (in other words I did not upgrade from 10 to 11) but the embedded activation should work with Windows 10 if I am not mistaken?

Many thanks for your time and help in trying to assist - it is much appreciated.

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Originally Posted by PNewton19523

P.S. One of the articles refers to a Visual Studio 6 Installer Wizard here
http://nuke.vbcorner.net/Articles/VB...S/Default.aspx

but the download page itself requests that "PLEASE STOP DONATION - WE ARE HAVING DISASTER RECOVERY - HOPE TO FULLY BACK ONLINE ASAP". I did try this some months ago and did make a donation which was eventually refunded. I never did get the download so I believe the suggestion to use this Wizard is no longer practicable.

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I can confirm that the VS6 Installer from that page works great with Windows 11. I don't know if you can still download it today but I do have a copy from 2017 (downloaded for free, no donation was necessary back then). It is a good thing I held on to it because it is literally a life saver. Without it you cannot install VB6 on modern versions of Windows 10 or 11, at least I wasn't able to figure it out.

This is what I keep in my VB6 folder for fresh installs:

Attachment 186140

I had some trouble installing on a new Win11 machine but it all came down to USB DVD drive errors reading the MSDN CDs. I shared the DVD drive of a known good PC and installed from there with no problems.

That might be part of the problem right there. I don't have a DVD Drive at all (neither USB or SATA) but I have kept ISO images of all my old disks. Have you tried installing from "mounted ISO images" instead of actual physical disks? Other than that I can only think you have a different version or build of Visual Studio 6. I have the "Enterprise" edition for example.

I always install from mounted ISOs without issue. Edition shouldn't matter.

I also always install from a mounted ISO.
The original media is stored in a physical cabinet and only needed for the license code.

To be fair I did install it without any problems on early versions of Windows 10. Then a major Windows version upgrade came (can't remember which one) and the normal installation no longer worked. That is when I discovered the Visual Studio 6 Installer discussed above and haven't looked back ever since. It may be entirely possible that the current Windows 10 version doesn't have that problem but at the moment I have no need or desire to test that theory. Maybe I'll do it in a virtual machine just for kicks!

I've been back to the site and visited the forum. Apparently, the author died in November 2021, and it is no longer possible to make donations and download/activate the product. Under the circumstances, would anybody be prepared to send me a copy? I would be more than happy to make a donation to your favourite charity.

I once read somewhere on this forum that a failed installation can SOMETIMES cause future attempts to also fail. The advice I recall was to completely uninstall that first 'failed' installation. I do NOT recall how this was done...it may have required Registry work, but I don't remember. You MIGHT try to see if VB6 appears in the list of installed software and uninstall it. If it doesn't, bare minimum, delete any folders that may have been created for Visual Basic (or Studio) 6.0. I'm only guessing here, but I DO recall someone 'fixing' their issue by doing some sort of uninstall (uninstall/Registry/delete/etc).

Oh, and I also read somewhere that one person had to reinstall WINDOWS before re-attempting a VB6 reinstallation!

Anyway, just thoughts.

If you have a system restore point that should clean up the component and registry stuff that it installed, should be able to re-run it after that.

Or manually delete these directories and keys:

Code:

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    \Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
    \Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSDesigners98
    \Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSDN
    \Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VS98
    \Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Wizards98

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MS Setup (ACME)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VBA\Microsoft Visual Basic
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Visual Basic\6.0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MS Setup (ACME)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\6.0\Setup

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\DevStudio
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\MSVSDG
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\HTML Help Collections
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Visual Basic\6.0
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Visual Component Manager
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Visual Modeler
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\6.0
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\DevStudio
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSVSDG
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Visual Basic\6.0
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Visual Modeler
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualFoxPro
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\6.0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\MS Setup (ACME)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\6.0\Setup

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\DevStudio
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\MSVSDG
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\HTML Help Collections
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Visual Basic\6.0
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Visual Component Manager
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Visual Modeler
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\6.0

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One common cause of failure is Microsoft locking down registry keys. Honestly at this point if I was having trouble I'd take it farther than running elevated, I'd straight up run it as SYSTEM\TrustedInstaller, which will let it access keys MS has locked down (apparently this allows you to proceed with ADO and RDS checked too, not that you should).

And how do you run an app as TrustedInstaller?

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/advanced_run.html

Once you do have VB installed if you ever needed it again I wrote a sample of how to do it programmatically: https://www.vbforums.com/showthread....tem-privileges

Very nice info about running as TrustedInstaller, thanks for sharing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PNewton19523

I've been back to the site and visited the forum. Apparently, the author died in November 2021, and it is no longer possible to make donations and download/activate the product. Under the circumstances, would anybody be prepared to send me a copy? I would be more than happy to make a donation to your favourite charity.

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I have uploaded my old copy of VS6 Installer at: https://temp.sh/ujrmK/VS6InstallerSetup.zip, (SHA-1 -> "7de086a19f0ce45879cd24d7bc672c6fb4d1a166" paranoia check to make sure they don't change the contents). This way you can only blame me if it doesn't work, haha! :)
It will expire after 3 days since this is a temporary files sharing site I just found on Google. Before installing make sure to read the instructions on how to prepare the installation folders as described on the original site (copying the CD files and MSDN and Service Pack 6).

Make that TWO people!

Many thanks for that - what is your favourite charity?

Hey don't worry about it mate, glad I could help. Here's to keeping VB6 alive!

Unfortunately the author Giorgio Brausi is dead. You need to install the latest free version.

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Originally Posted by fabel358

Unfortunately the author Giorgio Brausi is dead. You need to install the latest free version.

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And where would you suggest I install the latest free version from?

Thanks VanGoghGaming.

I had previously been able to run VB6 Enterprise on Windows 10,
but after the re-install of Windows 10 in May of this year,
I was not able to install VB6 Enterprise on Windows 10 again.

Since then, I have been running VB6 Enterprise on Windows XP in an Oracle VirtualBox.

The VS6Installer that you provided worked great.
I once again have VB6 Enterprise installed on Windows 10,
including the Add-Ins that I use for VB6.

Many thanks!

Joe

Hi , i read it late, can you share it again? the temp file is gone.

Here it is once again for another fateful 3 days: https://temp.sh/DmVGo/VS6InstallerSetup.zip

It looks like there is still good demand for this VS6 Installer. Maybe someone could find a more permanent host for it?

tnx!

I'm to late ,Could someone share files again ?

I grabbed it. Should last a little longer on this host:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/ragc6...Setup.zip/file

"I have uploaded my old copy of VS6 Installer at: https://temp.sh/ujrmK/VS6InstallerSetup.zip"

Any chance of getting that up somewhere again please.

I got VB6 installed on my Windows 11 machine but absolutely can not get it to install in 64bit Windows 10. All I get constantly is "Visual Studio 6.0 Professional Setup was not completed successfully".

I have gotten that same error about 50 times now. UAC is Off, Virus and other protection software are turned off. What hair I have left has been pulled out.

This is Windows 10 21H2.

It's linked in the post literally above yours!

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Originally Posted by fafalone

I grabbed it. Should last a little longer on this host:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/ragc6...Setup.zip/file

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Worked to a point and then it gets the same error I do "Visual Studio 6.0 Professional Setup was not completed successfully".

<Sigh> No fricken hair left. It installed in windows 11 but I can not get it to install in Windows 10. Weird.

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Originally Posted by VanGoghGaming

It's linked in the post literally above yours!

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LOL - missed it, duh.

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Originally Posted by VanGoghGaming

It's linked in the post literally above yours!

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I'm beginning to wonder if my copy on my network is corrupt. I'll have to see of I can find another copy of VB6.

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Originally Posted by daveyk021

I'm beginning to wonder if my copy on my network is corrupt. I'll have to see of I can find another copy of VB6.

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Install VirtualBox, create a VM, install Windows XP (and install the final Service Pack), and then try to install VB6 in your XP VM.

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Originally Posted by daveyk021

Worked to a point and then it gets the same error I do "Visual Studio 6.0 Professional Setup was not completed successfully".

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It is because it is 64 bits and can't run VB6's 16 bits installer.

https://www.vbforums.com/showthread....=1#post5579991

There was never a 16bit VB6; VB4 was the last with a 16bit version.

16bit exes don't even start.

The installation bootstrapper is a 16-bit program. On later versions of Windows the program is recognized and a substitute gets run in its place automagically.

Most likely something else is going on here. Bad/illegitimate copy or a screwed up Windows installation.

It's amazing that we keep keep running around this same mulberry bush here.

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Originally Posted by VanGoghGaming

Very nice info about running as TrustedInstaller, thanks for sharing.



I have uploaded my old copy of VS6 Installer at: https://temp.sh/ujrmK/VS6InstallerSetup.zip, (SHA-1 -> "7de086a19f0ce45879cd24d7bc672c6fb4d1a166" paranoia check to make sure they don't change the contents). This way you can only blame me if it doesn't work, haha! :)
It will expire after 3 days since this is a temporary files sharing site I just found on Google. Before installing make sure to read the instructions on how to prepare the installation folders as described on the original site (copying the CD files and MSDN and Service Pack 6).

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Is your VS6Installer the 5.0 release ? It is the last one free, after there are other updates until 6.5...
do you know where find it ?
Is someone continuing the VS6Installer project after Brausi death ?

I recently changed my Notebook and installed Windows 11 without problems, without using any external installer. I summarized all the steps, in post #16, in the following thread:

https://www.vbforums.com/showthread....-on-Windows-11

I sent a message to the moderator to see if he agreed to leave this tutorial as the header of a new thread, but I don't think I got a response, so I'm left abandoned right there.

Within my possibilities, I did my best to make this help as educational as possible.

If anyone believes that this help deserves to be somewhere else, let me know, or suggest what I should do.

Thank you!

with VB6 we can create a tool that can create and read registry.
if we know the registry needed to run VB6-IDE the only thing needed is to do that and COPY the entire "extracted" VB6 main folder to desired folder.

but as long we have working solutions we don't need to do that.

For me the installation on win 10, 11 never a problem. That's what I do. Right-click on the Setup file. Property. Put compatibility mode win xp service pack 3. Launch the setup. When the files all seem to be copied, the system freezes. Stop the computer with CONTRL-ALT+DEL. Close active programs. Then create a shortcut on your desktop. Connect the link with the VB6 file on the disk. Then go to the link and with the right button choose RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR. Launch vb6. Perfect.

@Giorgina.....did you install SP6?

Yes. I installed it normally (after vb6). I don't remember now step by step.
But normally.

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Originally Posted by Giorgina

For me the installation on win 10, 11 never a problem. That's what I do. Right-click on the Setup file. Property. Put compatibility mode win xp service pack 3. Launch the setup. When the files all seem to be copied, the system freezes. Stop the computer with CONTRL-ALT+DEL. Close active programs. Then create a shortcut on your desktop. Connect the link with the VB6 file on the disk. Then go to the link and with the right button choose RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR. Launch vb6. Perfect.

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I tried to follow your instruction but installation stop because operative system is 64 bit.... did you use a Win10 release 32 bit ?

Did you (rmazzax) follow the instructions in the link in post #2?

I think most people just click "Next, Next, Next, Finish" in the installation wizard and forget to select "Custom" and disable the DAO and ADO components that are the primary culprits for an installation to fail.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OptionBase1

an alternative solution would be to install something like VirtualBox, and then create a Virtual Machine that runs an older version of Windows

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The same EXACT thing was done with DS Game Maker.. I won't get into specs, but yes.. VirtualBox is definately one way to go about it. The file "may" be too big for some older pc's, so you might want to look into downloading and joining split files into 1.

Yes, SamOscarBrown, I set the compatibility mode win xp service pack 3 for Setup file, then I run it but immediately a message show me the error for non compatibility with x64 operative system.
I'm working on a VMware Virtual Machine WIN10pro

I found another procedure to install VisualStudio 6 in WIN10, as follow :
1) copy installation disk in any folder of your PC
2) open folder and search for subfolder SETUP. Search for file "vs98pro.stf" or "vb98pro.stf" ("vs98ent.stf" or "vb98ent.stf" for ENTERPRISE version)
3) Do two copies for the .STF files and rename them as "acmsetup.stf" and "acost.exe"
4) Copy all files of SETUP folder in the upper folder (..\)
5) Run as Administrator the file "ACMSETUP.EXE"

Procedure is good for me, I tested it with Visual C++ application, I'm going to installa VB6 too.
At moment I'm not able to install the Service Pack 6, I'm working on it :)

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Originally Posted by rmazzax

At moment I'm not able to install the Service Pack 6, I'm working on it :)

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Do the same with the SP6, I mean the steps you described.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VanGoghGaming

Very nice info about running as TrustedInstaller, thanks for sharing.



I have uploaded my old copy of VS6 Installer at: https://temp.sh/ujrmK/VS6InstallerSetup.zip, (SHA-1 -> "7de086a19f0ce45879cd24d7bc672c6fb4d1a166" paranoia check to make sure they don't change the contents). This way you can only blame me if it doesn't work, haha! :)
It will expire after 3 days since this is a temporary files sharing site I just found on Google. Before installing make sure to read the instructions on how to prepare the installation folders as described on the original site (copying the CD files and MSDN and Service Pack 6).

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This does not work on a Win 11 machine does it.. the thread is unclear to this old dog.

I did get VB6 working on Win11, here are stuff I have done:
* MSJava removal from installation (common, you can google how)
* Administator perms
* After Part 2 of installation; area with the blue progressbar and white background with text, if it fails you can ignore it, VB6 is already installed
* Disabling VS6 from installation