Install VB6 program on WIN7

[Honsolo]

I have a VB6 program that loads fine in XP. I tried to load it in WIN7 with the virtual Desktop and I get DLL errors, says they aren't a good image. Also a problem with the DLLselfregister.dll. I see from the posts here there is a long list of things I can do to make it work, but I don't understand what most of it means. Has anyone built and installer for VB6 that will load into WIN7 Virtual Desktop. Maybe a better installer then the one with VB6. I know sooner or later someone will cone out with a conversion program for VB6 to WIN7. I see adds for companies offering to convert it for a price.
Most the time I look for info on XP and VB to WIN7 it switches to an explanation about Vista.

[dilettante]

Windows 7 did not make changes as drastic as those for Vista, it's more of a "point release" and indeed it is version 6.1 as opposed to Vista (6.0). Programmers who skipped Vista did themselves a disservice because that's where most of the developer documentation about the changes was released. Most Windows 7 specific material talks about new changes to the Shell, Taskbar, and a few new kinds of dialogs.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Windows 7 Virtual Desktop." There was a Windows XP PowerToy by that name and a SysInternals applet called Desktops. Are you talking about something else? Perhaps related to XP Mode in Windows 7?


Installation is indeed where a lot of trouble comes in for people who played fast and loose with admin accounts under XP. But the PDW setups still work fine for many purposes on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7, as well as they did under XP anyway. There shouldn't be many new issues there.

More likely you're doing something like trying to deploy components tailored to each OS, like the VCRT*.DLLs. You should not have been deploying XP system components to XP systems anyway, and they won't work on other OSs at all. This isn't an issue for the controls and such that came with VB6. Most of those were still generic code up until Vista. Vista and Windows 7 will silently ignore attempts to replace the new tailored versions with old generic ones, and those new ones are already in Windows now.

Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0 on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 lists the VB6 components preinstalled, those you must still install, and those unsupported.


Keeping up is just part of the cost of doing business when you use VB6 today. The product is now static and Microsoft only supports the running of existing applications in compatibility mode. The tools are not being updated to "understand" new versions of Windows so we have to.

[Honsolo]

Is it possible to read my existing VB6 program into Vista and output something that will work better in win7.

What I'm referring to as virtual desktop is the virtual machine WIN7 in XP mode. I learned VB6 years ago (just enough to be dangerous). I only have one program to write and I do feel my job depends on it. If I can show value to my company I will be passed over for the up coming layoffs. Needless to say I am stressing because I can't get the darn thing to load.

[baja_yu]

What does the application do? It should work on Vista/W7 without compatibility modes and virtaul modes if it is coded right.

Also, what is the exact error message you get?

[dilettante]

The way Virtual XP Mode works is as follows: to install XP-demanding software, you fire up the regular XP desktop. This gives the familiar virtualization experience, an OS within a window with no real surprises. Run through the installer, hit "next" a bunch of times, the usual drill. This isn't, however, how applications are supposed to be used. Start menu icons within the VM are replicated to the Windows 7 Start menu, allowing applications to be launched without having to use XP. And when they do launch, they are placed directly on the Windows 7 desktop—no OS within a window, just regular application windows.

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/rev...-xp-mode.ars/2

[dilettante]

The only conversion services you are probably seeing are those meant to help convert VB6 to VB.Net.

There are actually only a few things you need to do to make a VB6 program run well under Vista or Windows 7. Most of those are things you should already be doing in your programs anyway.

These are described in Modifications Required for VB6 Applications to Work on Vista/7. Some things there are merely opinion and not fact. For example it is perfectly fine to target a database program to ADO 2.5 instead of the ADO 2.8 stated as a requirement there while it entirely misses the caution about early binding to ADOX. There is also some shaky advice about where to put things like settings files: not wrong, but incomplete for a newbie.

It just isn't easy to create a complete "cookbook" for keeping your VB6 programs up to date. There is a huge amount of information to absorb, some of it dating back to late 1998. Most of it is "layered" as recommendations later became requirements and new requirements were introduced over time. Many people writing VB6 programs for Windows XP never realized they were relying on appcompat features intended only to let old Win95 programs continue to run on NT 4.0, then Win2K, etc.


This is why it is much easier to answer questions about specific problems. For that we need to know exactly what errors and error messages are seen and when in the process (during installation, when the program is run, at some point during execution, when the program closes, etc.).

For installation problems it usually helps to see your setup.lst files or even your <project>.pdm files (or equivalent if you are using something besides the PDW).

[Honsolo]

I used the Visual Studio installer from MS and my VB6 loaded right into Win7. Although I have one little snag. I included the Excel.exe in the install and I can't find it in the dir. When my program needs to open the excel file it uses the excel I have loaded in the virtual machine that isn't open now and will only open read only. The excel I used is an older one so loading ms office into Win7 won't work. Where do i find the excel.exe that loaded with my program so I can set the excel files of my program to it.

[vb5prgrmr]

You cannot legally redistribute the Excel.exe of any version and if you were so lucky as to get permission to do so, Excel.exe has about a half dozen dependencies that would have to be installed also...

[Honsolo]

So what your telling me is the Excel.exe that MS/VB installer included in the setup isn't a support file. I have to make sure every system running my excel based program has to already have the right version of Excel loaded on it or my program won't function.

[si_the_geek]

The users either need the same version installed, or you need to change your code to use Late Binding (which will work with whichever version is installed).

You can find details of how to convert to Late Binding in my Excel tutorial - link in my signature.

[Honsolo]

Thank you so much for that info.