Compatibility issue

[krtxmrtz]

My laptop is getting old and wearied and I'm planning to buy a new one for Christmas. New computers come with Windows 8 and I just don't know if VB6 is compatible. Any comments?

[SamOscarBrown]

Sure....Google, or Search This Forum "VB6 with Windows 8".
There's a coupla 'tricks', especially when loading Service Packs, but basically, run your (legal) copy of VB6 install, and when it 'hangs' (I bet it will), simply restart the computer...bet the basics are there....and when that is done, do the search as I mentioned and pay attention to loading Service Packs.

Sam

[krtxmrtz]

Sure....Google, or Search This Forum "VB6 with Windows 8".
There's a coupla 'tricks', especially when loading Service Packs, but basically, run your (legal) copy of VB6 install, and when it 'hangs' (I bet it will), simply restart the computer...bet the basics are there....and when that is done, do the search as I mentioned and pay attention to loading Service Packs.

Sam

Do you mean Windows 8 service packs? Google searching I see SP1 corresponds to 8.1 which runs already on most computers. Are there any other SPs after that?

[Arnoutdv]

No, it's about the Visual Basic 6 service packs

[dilettante]

Shop for a Windows 7 machine, they're still around. You'll be far happier.

I don't think anything even ships with Windows 8 anymore, most machines come with Windows 8.1 which is not the same thing. Even if you find one you'll be forced to update to 8.1 fairly quickly or else you don't get new security patches.

[SamOscarBrown]

Shop for a Windows 7 machine, they're still around. You'll be far happier.

I don't think anything even ships with Windows 8 anymore, most machines come with Windows 8.1 which is not the same thing. Even if you find one you'll be forced to update to 8.1 fairly quickly or else you don't get new security patches.

That MIGHT be good advice, but eventually, like XP, Win7 will not be supported. Best (IMO) to bite the bullet now and get 8.1 loaded machines...besides Win7 being, excuse me, 'outdated', the newer COMPUTERS are normally improvements over those that came with Win7. Just sayin'.

I run VB6 (like lots of others) just fine (with my limited programming skills) on 8.1.

[DataMiser]

Personally I would skip Windows 8. If I were to get a system today I would look for Windows 7 else I would wait for Windows 10.

Actually I did just build a new system last month and of course it is Windows 7 Professional x64. I also recommend to my customers to get Windows 7 and so far all of them have been able to find something with 7 pre-installed.

As for the hardware part just because it is newer and has Windows 8 does not mean it is better. From the performance test results I have saw Windows 8 performs noticeably worse than 7 on identical machines.

[JohnTurnbull]

VB6 runs fine on Windows 8 and Windows 10!

[Max187Boucher]

VB6 runa just fine on windows 8 might get couple 'errors' but setup should go thru.
Same with win7.

I bought a new laptop (yes it came with 8.1) not too long ago since my other laptop dont work i formatted and put windows 7 pro 64bit from my old laptop. Can't stand windows 8 even tho 8.1 is a bit better with the start button back, but still hate the concept of the whole thing.

Win7/8 will require to run as admin all the time.

[DataMiser]

Interesting. I have not looked at 8.1 and did not know they added the start button back. I installed 8 on one of my desktops right after it was released and played with it for a little while but really did not like it at all. Fortunately I installed it on a second drive as a dual boot option with Win7 so I just changed which OS comes up by default back to 7 and haven't bothered with it since.

When 10 is released I'll take a look at that and see how it goes, for now I am totally happy using 7 and even XP on my other machine for quite a few things both are better than 8 imo.

[SamOscarBrown]

Actually, with 8.1 (and 8, I believe I did), I have it boot up to what LOOKS like the Win7 look and feel (and yes, the Start Button (which I had earlier added with a 3rd party app, but don't need now). I do NOT have Win7 installed on a separate partition. So, unless I want to go to the 8.1 'screen', I don't have to....I run all my stuff (well, most of it anyway...some Office Apps are still defaulted to start up on the 8.1 'side' (but I think I can change that if I want to) so it looks like 7. So, basically, my machine (90%) of the time, looks like I am running 7, but really the OS is 8.1.

[DataMiser]

I haven't bought a pre-configured system for about 10 years now. I generally buy the components and build them myself. I think I get more for my money that way and get better hardware. Of course I'm talking desktops here. If I were to get a laptop then it would be pre-configured but most likely I would look for a good price on one that I could have customized though I have considered the surface pro, if it was a little cheaper maybe.

I do my work from my home office so don't really need a portable PC at this point.

The last system I built I ended up with an AMD FX8350 CPU, 8gigs DDR3, 500g WD Black HDD, 2 128g SSDs, New case with excellent air flow and a big tower cooler on the CPU with a GeForce GTX750 GPU, and Windows 7 pro. I think it came out to about $800 when all was said and done runs cool and quiet and very quick

[Max187Boucher]

I haven't bought a pre-configured system for about 10 years now. I generally buy the components and build them myself. I think I get more for my money that way and get better hardware. Of course I'm talking desktops here. If I were to get a laptop then it would be pre-configured but most likely I would look for a good price on one that I could have customized though I have considered the surface pro, if it was a little cheaper maybe.

I do my work from my home office so don't really need a portable PC at this point.

The last system I built I ended up with an AMD FX8350 CPU, 8gigs DDR3, 500g WD Black HDD, 2 128g SSDs, New case with excellent air flow and a big tower cooler on the CPU with a GeForce GTX750 GPU, and Windows 7 pro. I think it came out to about $800 when all was said and done runs cool and quiet and very quick

Same here i buy my desktop components one by one and end up with something powerful last one cost me about 2000$ but for the laptops I just go cheap as long as it looks good enough to run the apps that i use. My laptops usually last an average of 3years then something goes. I dont mind spending 250-300$ every 3-4 years. Technology changes anyways so a computer 3-4 years old has old technology and will be slower then the cheapest laptop you can find.

[Max187Boucher]

I haven't bought a pre-configured system for about 10 years now. I generally buy the components and build them myself. I think I get more for my money that way and get better hardware. Of course I'm talking desktops here. If I were to get a laptop then it would be pre-configured but most likely I would look for a good price on one that I could have customized though I have considered the surface pro, if it was a little cheaper maybe.

I do my work from my home office so don't really need a portable PC at this point.

The last system I built I ended up with an AMD FX8350 CPU, 8gigs DDR3, 500g WD Black HDD, 2 128g SSDs, New case with excellent air flow and a big tower cooler on the CPU with a GeForce GTX750 GPU, and Windows 7 pro. I think it came out to about $800 when all was said and done runs cool and quiet and very quick

Same here i buy my desktop components one by one and end up with something powerful last one cost me about 2000$ but for the laptops I just go cheap as long as it looks good enough to run the apps that i use. My laptops usually last an average of 3years then something goes. I dont mind spending 250-300$ every 3-4 years. Technology changes anyways so a computer 3-4 years old has old technology and will be slower then the cheapest laptop you can find.

@Sam
Even with the 'look' of windows 7 nothing is the same only the desktop view will be similar, all the control panel stuff and registry.
Only real thing i like about windows 8 is the fast boot.

[DataMiser]

I would say that my 4 year old PC is likely faster than any laptop that you can buy for less than $2000, not to mention far superior video and way more storage space and I paid less than $1000 for it. In fact I would go so far as to say my 6 year old PC is far superior to any cheap laptop out there.

[Max187Boucher]

Your 4 year old 'desktop' maybe yes but i was talking about a 4 year old laptop. My desktop pc is also faster then my laptops of course.

[SamOscarBrown]

I guess for you 'big boys' who do a lot of programming for a business, a super-fast "PC/laptop" is needed, but I think in this case, the OP probably just needs a regular HP.

[dilettante]

You don't really need a super PC for programming with VB6. After all, it was designed to perform well on the mid-class and better machines of 1998.

.Net is another story. Go get a cup of coffee as the IDE loads, compiler runs, etc.

[DataMiser]

True VB6 will run fine on my old doorstop (laptop Pentium 100mhz 8 megs of ram Windows 95) Not that I would use it.

But then I don't buy a new PC to run VB6. I use several different languages and I also fire up a game from time to time. The new system I built was intended to work with one of the new racing games coming out soon.

The .Net IDE is not so bad once you tweak it a little. After turning off the news feed VB 2008 takes roughly 10 seconds to fully load on this XP system.

[Magic Ink]

If you are developing apps for other folks professionally then it is always good to have access to all current versions of Windows for testing. Otherwise what do you do when a customer has problems with your app under OS x when you only developed it under OS y. These days only Windows 7 and 8.1 really have to be considered for business applications; just a few users may be using Vista; quite a few will be using XP of course but should they really be catered for any more...
I find dual booting Win 7 and 8.1 on a single machine works well, however be aware that Windows Restore does not work (without registry hacks) for one of the OSs installed in the dual boot.
VMs of OSs within other OSs sounds better than it actually is I suspect and I've never fancied it.
Slot in hard drives (one per OS) works well.
So suggest you get a Windows 7 machine and add 8.1 to it via a dual boot or swappable drive.

[DataMiser]

I use VmWare Workstation and after some tweaking it works very well. I can easily setup a VM for pretty much any OS that I want to target. I tried every VM I could find before I finally settled on the one I am using now. It seems to offer the most options, stability and performance of any that I have tried. Works great as a test bed but you really need a decent PC to run it well. It also has a clone tool available that allows you to create a VM image from an existing PC. I used this to clone one of my older development PCs and then ran performance test on the original PC and the VM and the VM performed noticeably better than the actual PC it came from.

The dual boot option is not bad but really for testing software you should use a clean OS image. If you are using one that has had other software installed then it is always possible that you have missed something in your install that just happens to have been installed on your machine by some other piece of software so the install seems to work fine but then fails when the end user tries to load it.

[dilettante]

One of the advantages of using test VMs is that some virtualization software supports an "undo disks" feature. This lets you roll back to a clean OS after each testing session.

This is important for VB6 programmers because it is the only way to determine whether your installers work properly.

Dual-booting fails as a serious testing approach for that very reason. Your test OS images just get dirtier and dirtier as you work, to the point where your tests rapidly become invalid.

[DataMiser]

Even if the VM does not support the undo disk feature you can still do it effectively. You just make a copy of the clean Virtual Disk file after setting it up and then you can copy the clean image over the one you used to restore it back to the clean status.

[pekko]

One additional option, Windows 7 – VHD Boot
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/knom/archive...guideline.aspx
This VHD file is mounted as a virtual disk, you can use it as a normal hard disk drive, but all the data is stored in ONE file. The machine is booted physically (unlike with Virtual PC), so you can only run one at a time, but have the full machine’s power.
There’s a performance decrease of about 3%